The poem
Because I have no garden and No pence to buy, Before the flower shop I stand And sigh. The beauty of the Springtide spills In glowing posies Of voilets and daffodils And roses.
And as I see that joy of bloom, Sad sighing, I think of Mother in her room, Lone lying. She babbles of the garden fair Her childhood knew, And how she gathered roses there In joyous dew.
I shiver in the street so grey, Yet still I stop; In gutter grime it seems so gay, This flower shop . . . "Oh Mister, could you spare one rose?" (There now, I'm crying), "For Mother,--every blossom knows --Is dying."