Volume Iii Part 36 (2/2)

For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth [1770-1850]

TO DAFFODILS

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early-rising sun Has not attained his noon.

Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to the even-song; And, having prayed together, we Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay as you, We have as short a spring; As quick a growth to meet decay, As you, or any thing.

We die As your hours do, and dry Away, Like to the summer's rain; Or as the pearls of morning's dew, Ne'er to be found again.

Robert Herrick [1591-1674]

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY On Turing One Down With The Plough, In April 1786

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, Thou's met me in an evil hour; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem: To spare thee now is past my power, Thou bonny gem.

Alas! it's no thy neibor sweet, The bonny lark, companion meet, Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, Wi' speckled breast, When upward-springing, blithe, to greet The purpling east!

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Upon thy early, humble birth; Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm, Scarce reared above the parent earth Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield High sheltering woods and wa's maun s.h.i.+eld; But thou, beneath the random bield O' clod, or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-fleld, Unseen, alane.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snawie bosom sunward spread, Thou lifts thy una.s.suming head In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies!

Such is the fate of artless maid, Sweet floweret of the rural shade!

By love's simplicity betrayed, And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid Low i' the dust.

Such is the fate of simple bard, On life's rough ocean luckless starred!

Unskillful he to note the card Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, And whelm him o'er!

Such fate to suffering worth is given, Who long with wants and woes has striven, By human pride or cunning driven To misery's brink, Till, wrenched of every stay but Heaven, He, ruined, sink!

Even thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, That fate is thine--no distant date; Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate, Full on thy bloom, Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight Shall be thy doom.

Robert Burns [1759-1796]

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