An Iris Blessing

May your blooms be floriferous and in good form,
Distinctive, with good substance, flare, and airborne,
With standards and falls that endure, never torn.
May you display many buds and blooms sublime,
In graceful proportion on strong stalks each day,
Gently floating above the fans and the fray.
May you too reach toward the moon and stars,
Bloom after bloom, many seasons in the sun,
Enjoying your life, health, and each loved one,
Until your 'living days are artfully done.

Iris, Most Beautiful Flower

Iris, most beautiful flower,
Symbol of life, love, and light;
Found by the brook, and the meadow,
Or lofty, on arable height.
You come in such glorious colors,
In hues, the rainbow surpass;
The chart of color portrays you,
In petal, or veins, of your class.
You bloom with the first in Winter,
With the last, in the Fall, you still show;
You steal the full beauty of Springtime,
With your fragrance and sharp color glow.
Your form and beauty of flower,
An artist's desire of full worth;
So Iris, we love you and crown you,
MOST BEAUTIFUL FLOWER ON EARTH!

The following iris poem is from an old catalog of "Green Gate Gardens 1931" which used to be in Bennettsville, South Carolina. The owner's name was Gabrielle Drake McColl. The poem is as follows:

(Untitled)

The garden with its little gate of green,
Invites you to enter, and view mysteries unseen,
Its vine laden bowers and overhanging trees,
The air filled with sweetness, the hum of the bees,
The flagged walks with Iris galore,
Of most beautiful coloring, unknown before,
Pink, white, purple, yellow, azure blue,
Mixed and mingled of every hue,
You come away wondering, can more beauty be seen
Than in the garden with its little gate of green.

Iris

White Iris, how pure, how lovely,
Like a virgin
In her starched lawn fete dress
Iris, pallid blue, gold veined,
And as if coloured from dawn chills,
Or from the yellow-fingered touching
Of curious starlight
Purple Iris,
Streaked with amethystine memories of the night,
Health-glossed and firm are those ripe wings
Of Oriental butterflies
So in my garden
Undulating ranks of Iris,
Slimly holding their broad flat blooms
(Like tripods of incense)
Aloft towards the moist spearing
Of morning sunlight.

Seasons

Leaves of my life are now turning
bronze and copper and gold.
And there is the fragrance of burning
as nights grow longer and cold.
Life's seasons are always recurrent
and winter no permanent thing -
Yet to me it is nothing abhorrent --
my life cannot cycle to spring.
The SPIRIT FOR LIFE which has sired me
shall take me again in its power
And composting all that is mortal
renew me in some shining flower.

More poetry can be found on page 2