{"id":1279,"date":"2008-04-15T15:24:24","date_gmt":"2008-04-15T20:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1279"},"modified":"2008-04-15T15:27:07","modified_gmt":"2008-04-15T20:27:07","slug":"spring-watch-38","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1279","title":{"rendered":"Spring watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

A poem by Frances Watkins Harper<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Dandelions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Welcome children of the Spring,
\n   In your garbs of green and gold,
\nLifting up your sun-crowned heads
\n   On the verdant plain and wold.<\/p>\n

As a bright and joyous troop
\n   From the breast of earth ye came
\nFair and lovely are your cheeks,
\n   With sun-kisses all aflame.<\/p>\n

In the dusty streets and lanes,
\n   Where the lowly children play,
\nThere as gentle friends ye smile,
\n   Making brighter life’s highway<\/p>\n

Dewdrops and the morning sun,
\n   Weave your garments fair and bright,
\nAnd we welcome you to-day
\n   As the children of the light.<\/p>\n

Children of the earth and sun.
\n   We are slow to understand
\nAll the richness of the gifts
\n   Flowing from our Father’s hand.<\/p>\n

Published in <\/em>Poems by Frances Watkins Harper, 1895. Complete book at Project Gutenberg<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

While searching for poetry by Unitarians and Universalists, I came across “Dandelions.” Even though Frances Harper uses late 19th C. American poetic conventions which may sound dated to our ears, her images and her thinking captured my attention. I liked the image of “Where the lowly children play\/ There as gentle friends ye smile”; which is both profoundly egalitarian, while also in the context of the poem perhaps offering an exegesis of Mark 10.13-16 where Jesus befriends children.<\/p>\n

And I particularly liked the image of humanity she offers in the fifth and sixth stanzas, when she calls us human beings “the children of the light. \/ Children of the earth and sun.” Those two lines alone make the poem for me.<\/p>\n

This being the week when dandelions are beginning to appear widely in New Bedford, I thought I’d post the poem here as a sort of meditation on the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A poem by Frances Watkins Harper: Dandelions. Welcome children of the Spring,    In your garbs of green and gold, Lifting up your sun-crowned heads    On the verdant plain and wold. As a bright and joyous troop    From the breast of earth ye came Fair and lovely are your cheeks,    With sun-kisses all aflame. In the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[353],"class_list":["post-1279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-watch","tag-frances-watkins-harper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}