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!
Unskilful 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!

1786.

Robert Burns.

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42

48

54

THE SMALL CELANDINE

THERE is a Flower, the lesser Celandine, That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain;

And, the first moment that the sun may shine, Bright as the sun himself, 't is out again!

When hailstones have been falling, swarm on

swarm,

Or blasts the green field and the trees

distrest,

Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm,
In close self-shelter, like a Thing at rest.

4

8

But lately, one rough day, this Flower I passed And recognised it, though an altered form, Now standing forth an offering to the blast, And buffeted at will by rain and storm.

12

I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice, "It doth not love the shower, not seek the cold: This neither is its courage nor its choice, But its necessity in being old.

"The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew; It cannot help itself in its decay;

16

Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue." And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was grey. 20

To be a Prodigal's Favourite-then, worse

truth,

A Miser's Pensioner-behold our lot!

O Man, that from thy fair and shining youth Age might but take the things Youth needed

not!

1804. 1807.

William Wordsworth.

24

THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE

FAIR FLOWER, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouched thy honied blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet:

No roving foot shall crush thee here,
No busy hand provoke a tear.

By Nature's self in white arrayed,
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by;
Thus quietly thy summer goes,
Thy days declining to repose.

Smit with those charms, that must decay,
I grieve to see your future doom;

They died, nor were those flowers more gay,
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;

12

Unpitying frosts, and Autumn's power
Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being came :
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
The space between, is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.

1786.

Philip Freneau.

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN

THOU blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.

Thou waitest late and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged Year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue-blue-as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

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24

12

16

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

1832

William Cullen Bryant.

20

THE RHODORA

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER

IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, To please the desert and the sluggish brook. The purple petals, fallen in the pool,

Made the black water with their beauty gay; Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, And court the flower that cheapens his array. Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

ΙΟ

Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask, I never knew:

But, in my simple ignorance, suppose

The self-same Power that brought me there

brought you.

1839.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.