Like a beautiful pink camellia

one of my favourite flowers...and a poem that i've always loved...

Like a beautiful pink camellia

That bloom in chilly August on it's dark green mother tree

So bright and fresh and pretty in the wintery wind and rain

That's how you've always looked to me and that's how you will remain.

The beautiful camellia flower that blooms fresh and young today

In two or three weeks if that long will have gone into decay

For flowers have such a brief span they quickly fade away

But in sixty years of living your beauty with you stay.

I feel privileged and grateful for to have you as a friend

And I will love you and respect you until my life will end

You are warm and kind hearted and well loved and well known

And it's due to you and to you only that into a better person I have grown.

You are wise and quite intelligent and beautiful to behold

And you don't have a gray hair on your head and you never will grow old

And on your sixtieth birthday you still look beautiful to me

Like the young and pretty pink flower on the green camellia tree.

by Francis Duggan