Part 119 (1/2)

And the following must be about the same date--

”The pretty Daisy which doth show Her love to Phbus, bred her woe; (Who joys to see his cheareful face, And mournes when he is not in place)-- 'Alacke! alacke! alacke!' quoth she, 'There's none that ever loves like me.'”

_The Deceased Maiden's Lover_--Roxburghe Ballads, i, 341.

I am not surprised to find that Milton barely mentions the Daisy. His knowledge of plants was very small compared to Shakespeare's, and seems to have been, for the most part, derived from books. His descriptions of plants all savour more of study than the open air. I only know of two places in which he mentions the Daisy. In the ”l'Allegro” he speaks of ”Meadows trim with Daisies pied,” and in another place he speaks of ”Daisies trim.” But I am surprised to find the Daisy overlooked by two such poets as Robert Herrick and George Herbert. Herrick sang of flowers most sweetly, few if any English poets have sung of them more sweetly, but he has little to say of the Daisy. He has one poem, indeed, addressed specially to a Daisy, but he simply uses the little flower, and not very successfully, as a peg on which to hang the praises of his mistress. He uses it more happily in describing the pleasures of a country life--

”Come live with me and thou shalt see The pleasures I'll prepare for thee, What sweets the country can afford, Shall bless thy bed and bless thy board.

. . . Thou shalt eat The paste of Filberts for thy bread, With cream of Cowslips b.u.t.tered; Thy feasting tables shall be hills, With Daisies spread and Daffodils.”

And again--

”Young men and maids meet, To exercise their dancing feet, Tripping the comely country round, With Daffodils and Daisies crowned.”

George Herbert had a deep love for flowers, and a still deeper love for finding good Christian lessons in the commonest things about him. He delights in being able to say--

”Yet can I mark how herbs below Grow green and gay;”

but I believe he never mentions the Daisy.

Of the poets of the seventeenth century I need only make one short quotation from Dryden--

”And then the band of flutes began to play, To which a lady sang a tirelay: And still at every close she would repeat The burden of the song--'The Daisy is so sweet, The Daisy is so sweet'--when she began The troops of knights and dames continued on The consort; and the voice so charmed my ear And soothed my soul that it was heaven to hear.”

I need not dwell on the other poets of the seventeenth century. In most of them a casual allusion to the Daisy may be found, but little more.

Nor need I dwell at all on the poets of the eighteenth century. In the so-called Augustan age of poetry, the Daisy could not hope to attract any attention. It was the correct thing if they had to speak of the country to speak of the ”Daisied” or ”Daisy-spangled” meads, but they could not condescend to any nearer approach to the little flower. If they had they would have found that they had chosen their epithet very badly. I never yet saw a ”Daisy-spangled” meadow.[370:1] The flowers may be there, but the long Gra.s.ses effectually hide them. And so I come _per saltum_ to the end of the eighteenth century, and at once to Burns, who brought the Daisy again into notice. He thus regrets the uprooting of the Daisy by his plough--

”Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, Thou'st met me in an evil hour; For I must crush amongst the stour Thy slender stem.

To spare thee now is past my power, Thou bonny gem.

Cold blew the bitter, biting north, Upon thy humble birth, Yet cheerfully thou venturest forth Amid the storm, Scarce reared above the Parent-earth Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield High sheltering woods and walks must s.h.i.+eld; But thou, between the random bield Of clod or stone, Adorn'st the rugged stubble field, Unseen, alone.

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

With Burns we may well join Clare, another peasant poet from Northamptons.h.i.+re, whose poems are not so much known as they deserve to be. His allusions to wild flowers always mark his real observation of them, and his allusions to the Daisy are frequent; thus--

”Smiling on the sunny plain The lovely Daisies blow, Unconscious of the careless feet That lay their beauties low.”

Again, alluding to his own obscurity--

”Green turfs allowed forgotten heap, Is all that I shall have, Save that the little Daisies creep To deck my humble grave.”

Again, in his description of evening, he does not omit to notice the closing of the Daisy at sunset--

”Now the blue fog creeps along, And the birds forget their song; Flowers now sleep within their hoods, Daisies b.u.t.ton into buds.”

And so we come to Wordsworth, whose love of the Daisy almost equalled Chaucer's. His allusions and addresses to the Daisy are numerous, but I have only s.p.a.ce for a small selection. First, are two stanzas from a long poem specially to the Daisy--

”When soothed awhile by milder airs, Thee Winter in the garland wears, That thinly shades his few gray hairs, Spring cannot shun thee.

While Summer fields are thine by right, And Autumn, melancholy wight, Doth in thy crimson head delight When rains are on thee.