To the Dandelion

And in each other's eyes we smiled:
Not yours, not yours the grievous-fair
Apparelling

With which you wet mine eyes; you wear,
Ah me, the garment of the grace

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,
No blossomy carillon 'tis of mirth

To me; I see my slaughtered joy

Bursting its cerement.

1481

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,
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth's ample round

May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.

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 rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,
Though most hearts never understand

To take it at God's value, but pass by
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye.

1482

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime; The eyes thou givest me

Are in the heart, and heed not space or time:

Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment
In the white lily's breezy tent,

His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,
Of meadows, where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the breezes pass,

The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,
Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue >
That from the distance sparkle through >

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,
Did we but pay the love we owe,

And with a child's undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God's book.

James Russell Lowell [1819-1891]

The Dandelions

1483

DANDELION

Ar dawn, when England's childish tongue
Lisped happy truths, and men were young,
Her Chaucer, with a gay content

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 winds that are themselves asleep,
Rapt Shelley found the airy ghost

Of that bright flower the spring loves most,

And ere one silvery ray was blown

From its full disk made it his own.

Now from the stubble poets glean

Scant flowers of thought; the Muse would wean
Her myriad nurslings, feeding them

On petals plucked from a dry stem.
For one small plumule still adrift,
The wind-blown dandelion's gift,

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,
Without a sound of warning,
A trooper band surprised the hill,
And held it in the morning.

We were not waked by bugle-notes,
No cheer our dreams invaded,

And yet, at dawn, their yellow coats
On the green slopes paraded.

We careless folk the deed forgot;

Till one day, idly walking,

We marked upon the self-same spot
A crowd of veterans talking.

They shook their trembling heads and gray
With pride and noiseless laughter;
When, well-a-day! they blew away,

And ne'er were heard of after!

Helen Gray Cone [1859

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 frost and shortening days portend
The agèd 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.

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.

William Cullen Bryant [1794-1878]

Goldenrod

1485

GOLDENROD

WHEN the wayside tangles blaze
In the low September sun,
When the flowers of Summer days

Droop and wither, one by one,
Reaching up through bush and brier,
Sumptuous brow and heart of fire,
Flaunting high its wind-rocked plume,
Brave with wealth of native bloom,-
Goldenrod!

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,
All o'errun with tangled vines,
Where the thistle claims its place,
And the straggling hedge confines,
Bearing still the sweet impress
Of unfettered loveliness,

In the field and by the wall,
Binding, clasping, crowning all,—
Goldenrod!

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;