In Unlikeliest Places
I looked for the fair-fringed gentian
In the haunts where once it grew,
But I found no trace in the likeliest place,
Though I searched till the falling dew.
So back I turned to the city,
And was nearing the busy throng,When the waning light revealed to my sight The flower I had sought so long.
I was weary and full of disquiet;
I long for the highest and best;
And I failed to find, in the friends once kind,
An answer which gave me rest.
But there came to me in my trouble
A friend I had cast aside,
And I thought of the day
when the dusty way
Could give what the field denied.
~ Henry Hildreth Piper
