Thanks for thy gift
  Of ocean flowers,
Born where the golden drift
  Of the slant sunshine falls
Down the green, tremulous walls
Of water, to the cool still coral bowers,
  Where, under rainbows of perpetual showers,
    God's gardens of the deep
    His patient angels keep;
  Gladdening the dim, strange solitude
    With fairest forms and hues, and thus
    For ever teaching us
The lesson which the many-colored skies,
The flowers, and leaves, and painted butterflies,
The deer's branched antlers, the gay bird that flings
The tropic sunshine from its golden wings,
The brightness of the human countenance,
Its play of smiles, the magic of a glance,
    For evermore repeat,
    In varied tones and sweet,
That beauty, in and of itself, is good.

O kind and generous friend, o'er whom
  The sunset hues of Time are cast,
  Painting, upon the overpast
  And scattered clouds of noonday sorrow
  The promise of a fairer morrow,
An earnest of the better life to come;
  The binding of the spirit broken,
  The warning to the erring spoken,
    The comfort of the sad,
The eye to see, the hand to cull
  Of common things the beautiful,
    The absent heart made glad
  By simple gift or graceful token
  Of love it needs as daily food,
  All own one Source, and all are good!
  Hence, tracking sunny cove and reach,
  Where spent waves glimmer up the beach,
  And toss their gifts of weed and shell
  From foamy curve and combing swell,
  No unbefitting task was thine
    To weave these flowers so soft and fair
  In unison with His design
    Who loveth beauty everywhere;
  And makes in every zone and clime,
    In ocean and in upper air,
  "All things beautiful in their time."

  For not alone in tones of awe and power
    He speaks to man;
  The cloudy horror of the thunder-shower
    His rainbows span;
    And where the caravan
Winds o'er the desert, leaving, as in air
The crane-flock leaves, no trace of passage there,
    He gives the weary eye
The palm-leaf shadow for the hot noon hours,
    And on its branches dry
  Calls out the acacia's flowers;
  And where the dark shaft pierces down
    Beneath the mountain roots,
  Seen by the miner's lamp alone,
    The star-like crystal shoots;
    So, where, the winds and waves below,
    The coral-branched gardens grow,
    His climbing weeds and mosses show,
    Like foliage, on each stony bough,
    Of varied hues more strangely gay
    Than forest leaves in autumn's day;-
      Thus evermore,
      On sky, and wave, and shore,
    An all-pervading beauty seems to say:
    God's love and power are one; and they,
    Who, like the thunder of a sultry day,
    Smite to restore,
And they, who, like the gentle wind, uplift
The petals of the dew-wet flowers, and drift
    Their perfume on the air,
Alike may serve Him, each, with their own gift,
    Making their lives a prayer!