The Making Of The Beautiful

 

"But in the last of these days He has spoken to us in the person of a Son,
Whom He appointed Heir and lawful Owner of all things, also by and
through Whom He created the worlds and the reaches of space
and the ages of time. He made, produced, built, operated,
and arranged them all in order.  
(Hebrews 1:2)

Image courtesy APKPure

Meadow and vale and mountain,

Ocean and lake and wood,

God looked on the fruit of His labor

And saw that His work was good;

And yet was there something lacking

In the world that He had made,

Something to brighten the greenness,

Something to lighten the shade.

He took a shred of the rainbow,

A bit of the sunshine's gold,

The colors of all the jewels

The mines of earth enfold,

A piece of the mist of evening

With the sunset woven through,

A scrap of the sky at noonday,

A clear, unclouded blue;

Of these He fashioned the flowers,

And some were red, like the rose,

And some were a lovely azure,

And some were pale as the snows;

Some, shaped like a fairy chalice

The perfumed honey to hold,

And some were stars of silver

And some were flakes of gold.

They flashed in the gloom of the forests,

They clung to the boughs of the trees,

They hid in the grass of the meadows,

They drifted away on the breeze,

They fell in the clefts of the canyons

And high on the mountains bare,

Where never an eye should see them

Save His Who had made them fair.

But still there was something wanting,

His labor was not yet done;

He gathered more of the colors

Of rainbow and sky and the sun,

And now unto these He added

The music of sea and land,

The tune of the rippling river,

The splash of the waves on the sand,

The raindrops' lilting measure,

The pine tree's crooning sigh,

The aspen's lisping murmur,

The wind's low lullaby,

Fair fluting of angel voices

From heavenly courts afar,

And the softest, dreamiest echoes

Of the song of the morning star.

Then deftly His fingers molded

The strong and the delicate things

Instinct with the joy and the beauty

Of songs and soaring wings;

Nightingale, heron, and seagull,

Bobolink, lark-and then,

I think that He smiled a little

As He tilted the tail of the wren,

He made the owl's face solemn

And twisted the blue jay's crest,

And He bent the beak of the parrot

And smoothed the oriole's vest,

As He burnished the crow's jet plumage

And the robin's breast of red;

"In the cold of the northern springtime

The children will love it," He said.

So some were quaint and cunning,

And some were only frail,

And some He gave a song to,

And lo, the birds of the air.

And the snippets of things left over,

He tossed out under the skies,

When falling, fluttering, flying,

Behold, they were butterflies!

Picture courtesy/Wikipedia

"The Making Of The Beautiful"
Annie Johnson Flint
(1866-1932)
American Christian poetess
and hymn writer