The Wild Honey Suckle

The Wild Honey Suckle
By Philip Freneau

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in the this silent, dull retreat,
Untouched they honied blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet:
     No roving foot shall crush thee here,
     No busy hand provoke a tear.

By Nature's self in white arrayed,
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by;
     Thus quietly thy summer goes,
     Thy days declining to repose.

Smit with those charms, that must decay,
I grieve to see your future doom;
They died--nor were those flowers more gay,
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;
     Unpitying frosts, and Autumn's power
     Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
    The space between, is but an hour,
    The frail duration of a flower.


My favorite line of the whole poem is in the last stanza, "If nothing once, you nothing lose."  We all started as nothing and will end as nothing (at least on this earth) so why not make the most of the time we have here.