Nature's Lesson

From deep observation I saw In growing plants and bedding seeds A strange manifest of nature's law That leaves come 'fore a root proceeds In animals a stem of cells Upon which the brain comes to rest Deep in the dark embryo dwells And somewhere there the heart will rest And since the top before bottom Forms, like sky's mist before the earth God higher yet let me fathom His presence first and then my birth Who, invisible adds, the mass To the dividing dormant cell Ere a suckling tongue brings the grass Food till it grows o'er all the dell There is a presence none may know With measured work or finite sight A vague meaning for each rainbow A vast love transparent in light Nature that shows God's absence here To some, reveal his presence to me And sometimes in the stillness clear In shooting leaves, this love I see.