©Roy Ernest Ballard 2013

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen

and waste its sweetness on the desert air…’

                                                               Thomas Gray

The flowers’ reply

We waste our sweetness on the desert air,

as flowers did before your race was born,

to advertise a vital message there:

to tell our friends we have a feast to share,

to coax them in to help us, to suborn,

we waste our sweetness on the desert air.

What fools are men, who strip the forest bare,

and then suppose that we are flowers forlorn

to advertise a vital message there 

in some location for which they don’t care

then write in verses with a kind of scorn

we ‘waste our sweetness on the desert air’. 

Our colours and our scented shapes are fair

no matter what the places we adorn

to advertise a vital message there. 

We do not brag about the wealth we share

with every creature that the air has borne;

we waste our sweetness on the desert air

to advertise a vital message there.