211 TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOW, IN APRIL, 1786 TEE, modest, crimson-tippèd flower, Thou's met me in an evil hour, For I maun crush amang the stoure Το spare Thy slender stem; thee now is past my power, Thou bonny gem. Alas! it's no thy neibor sweet, When upward springing, blithe, to greet Cauld blew the bitter biting north Scarce reared above the parent earth The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-field, Bield: shelter Histie: dry, barren Unseen, alane. Stoure: dust, dirt Weet: wetness There, in thy scanty mantle clad, But now the share uptears thy bed, Such is the fate of artless maid, Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid Such is the fate of simple bard, Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, Such fate to suffering worth is given, To misery's brink, Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven, Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate, Stern Ruin's plowshare drives, elate, Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight, Robert Burns We have short time to stay, as you, As your hours do, and dry Away Like to the Summer's rain; Ne'er to be found again. Robert Herrick 213 I WANDERED lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Continuous as the stars that shine Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they In such a jocund company: I gazed and gazed-but little thought For oft, when on my couch I lie And then my heart with pleasure fills, William Wordsworth 4 TO DAFFODILS1 YELLOW flowers that Herrick sung! O yellow flowers that danced and swung Unworthy, from this "pleasant lea,” Laugh back, unchanged and ever young; Reprinted through special arrangement with Mr. Alban Dobson and th the Oxford University Press. Ah, what a text to us o'erstrung, O yellow flowers! We, by the Age's oestrus stung, Still hunt the New with eager tongue, What ye have been ye still shall be, O yellow flowers! Austin Dobson 215 MIGN MIGNON'S SONG1 IGNON, a beautiful Italian maiden who is wandering in a northern land, yearns sadly for the South and home. Know'st thou the land of white-robed orange trees, With thee, with thee, To that loved Southland, dearest, I would flee! Know'st thou the palace mid whose pillared walls, I roamed, by solitary dreams beguiled, Till the cold marbles seemed to cry, Poor child! With thee, with thee, To that lost home, my loved one, I would flee! 1 From Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Translated by William F. Gi |