Classic Poem

I DISCOVERED a flower yesterday
In a rubbish barrel growing;
It smilingly nodded its head at me,
In the gentle zephyr blowing.

Its petals were beaten from elfin gold
By a fairy as day was breaking;
She daintily fashioned them all alike,
From a heart her pattern taking.

She joined them together in matchless grace,
With a star each pendant gripping,
And enamelled them all with velvet gloss,
Her brush in the sunshine dipping.

From her diadem then, a tiny pearl
She loosed from its sheeny setting,
And fastened it down in a stellar zone
With tethers of filmy netting.

It was only a weed, when all is said,
In a rubbish barrel growing,
That smilingly nodded its head at me,
In the gentle zephyr blowing;

But I plucked it, and bring it here to you
With never a word of preaching:
Should it bear no lesson within itself,
Why, you're past the power of teaching!