The Reaper and the Flowers

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There is a reaper whose name is death

Author: Henry W. Longfellow
Published in 38 hymnals

Representative Text

1 There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flow'rs that grow between.

2 "Shall I have naught that is fair?" saith he;
"Have naught but the bearded grain?
Though the breath of these flow'rs is sweet to me,
I'll give them all back again."

3 He gazed at the flow'rs with tearful eyes,
He kissed their drooping leaves;
It was for the Lord in Paradise,
He bound them in his sheaves.

4 "My Lord hath need of these flow'rets gay"
The Reaper said, and smil'd;
"Dear tokens of the earth are they,
Where he was once a child."

5 "They shall all bloom in fields of light,
Transplanted by my care,
And saints upon their garments white
These sacred blossoms wear."

6 And the mother gave in tears and pain,
The flowers she most did love;
She knew she should find them all again
In the fields of light above.

7 Oh, not in cruelty, not in wrath,
The Reaper came that day;
'Twas an angel visited the green earth,
And took the flow'rs away.

Source: Minnetonka Songs: for Sabbath Schools, compiled especially for the Minnetonka Sabbath-School Assembly #81

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Author: Henry W. Longfellow

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth , D.C.L. was born at Portland, Maine, Feb. 27, 1807, and graduated at Bowdoin College, 1825. After residing in Europe for four years to qualify for the Chair of Modern Languages in that College, he entered upon the duties of the same. In 1835 he removed to Harvard, on his election as Professor of Modern Languages and Belles-Lettres. He retained that Professorship to 1854. His literary reputation is great, and his writings are numerous and well known. His poems, many of which are as household words in all English-speaking countries, display much learning and great poetic power. A few of these poems and portions of others have come into common use as hymns, but a hymn-writer in the strict sense of that term he… Go to person page >

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