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

Index to poems in the collection by Henry Hildreth Piper