To the Dandelion And in each other's eyes we smiled: With which you wet mine eyes; you wear, I wove you when I was a boy; O mine, and not the year's your stolen Spring! And since ye wear it, Hide your sweet selves! I cannot bear it. For when ye break the cloven earth With your young laughter and endearment, To me; I see my slaughtered joy Bursting its cerement. 1433 Francis Thompson [1859?-1907] TO THE DANDELION DEAR common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold, Which not the rich earth's ample round May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, Nor wrinkled the lean brow Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease; 'Tis the Spring's largess, which she scatters now To take it at God's value, but pass by Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime; eyes thou givest me The Are in the heart, and heed not space or time: Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee; The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, Who, from the dark old tree Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, And I, secure in childish piety, Listened as if I heard an angel sing With news from heaven, which he could bring Fresh every day to my untainted ears When birds and flowers and I were happy peers. How like a prodigal doth nature seem, When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem More sacredly of every human heart, Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, And with a child's undoubting wisdom look On all these living pages of God's book. James Russell Lowell [1819–1891] The Dandelions 1435 DANDELION At dawn, when England's childish tongue Hummed through the shining fields, scarce bent By poet's foot, and, plucking, set, All lusty, sunny, dewy-wet, A dandelion in his verse, Like the first gold in childhood's purse. At noon, when harvest colors die On the pale azure of the sky, And dreams through dozing grasses creep Of that bright flower the spring loves most, From its full disk made it his own. Now from the stubble poets glean Scant flowers of thought; the Muse would wean On petals plucked from a dry stem. The fields once blossomy we scour Where the old poets plucked the flower. Annie Rankin Annan [18 THE DANDELIONS UPON a showery night and still, We were not waked by bugle-notes, We careless folk the deed forgot; Till one day, idly walking, We marked upon the self-same spot They shook their trembling heads and gray And ne'er were heard of after! Helen Gray Cone [1859 TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN THOU blossom bright with autumn dew, Thou comest not when violets lean Thou waitest late and com'st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye I would that thus, when I shall see William Cullen Bryant [1794-1878] Goldenrod 1437 GOLDENROD WHEN the wayside tangles blaze Droop and wither, one by one, When the meadow, lately shorn, Parched and languid, swoons with pain, When her life-blood, night and morn, Shrinks in every throbbing vein, Round her fallen, tarnished urn Leaping watch-fires brighter burn; Royal arch o'er Autumn's gate, Bending low with lustrous weight,Goldenrod! In the pasture's rude embrace, And the straggling hedge confines, In the field and by the wall, Nature lies disheveled, pale, With her feverish lips apart, Day by day the pulses fail, Nearer to her bounding heart; Yet that slackened grasp doth hold Store of pure and genuine gold; |