Fire-Flowers
And only where the forest fires have sped,
Scorching relentlessly the cool north lands,
A sweet wild flower lifts its purple head,
And, like some gentle spirit sorrow-fed,
It hides the scars with almost human hands.
And only to the heart that knows of grief,
Of desolating fire, of human pain,
There comes some purifying sweet belief,
Some fellow-feeling beautiful, if brief.
And life revives, and blossoms once again.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on May 2, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Fire-Flowers” originally appeared in Canadian Born (G. N. Morang, 1903).
Emily Pauline Johnson
Emily Pauline Johnson, who also published under her paternal grandfather’s Mohawk name Tekahionwake (“double wampum”), was born on March 10, 1861, on the Six Nations Reserve, Canada West. She was the fourth and youngest child born to George Henry Martin Johnson (Onwanonsyshon), a Mohawk who was both a hereditary and elected chief of the Six Nations. Johnson’s father was fluent in six Indigenous languages, which allowed him to work as a translator. Johnson’s mother, Emily Susanna Howells, was an English-born Canadian from Bristol. Johnson’s father died in 1884.