That’s the name of the flower that just began to bloom outside my front door. It is the first sign of spring, and it’s a delicate white petal on a four-inch green stem, so tentative a venture to emerge in the middle of winter. It’ll survive inches of snow, and when the crocuses finally come in March, it will have finished its statement of courage.
Like the virtue of Hope, it is the product of human cultivation, and its tiny bulbs must have originated in Holland where other spring bulbs start their way to market. As I look at the three of them in the shadow of a bush, an azalea in this case, it will have done its job of lifting my spirits ‘ere the azalea is in splendor.
There are many hopes for the spring that already bloom in my heart, and when the robins return (they still do) I, too, will burst into a hymn or a song.
Civilization 