Poems — Second Series by Emily Dickinson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Mabel Loomis Todd
God Made a Little Gentian
God made a little gentian; It tried to be a rose And failed, and all the summer laughed. But just before the snows There came a purple creature That ravished all the hill; And summer hid her forehead, And mockery was still. The frosts were her condition; The Tyrian would not come Until the North evoked it. "Creator! shall I bloom?"