Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born While on mine ear it rings, 21 Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 28 WEE, modest, crimson-tippèd flower, Thou 's met me in an evil hour; For I maun crush amang the stoure To spare thee now is past my power, Alas! it 's no thy neebor 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, High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield; But thou, beneath the random bield O'clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-field, Unseen, alane. There, in thy scanty mantle clad, But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies! 12 18 24 30 Such is the fate of artless maid, And guileless trust; Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid Such is the fate of simple Bard, On Life's rough ocean luckless starred! 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, Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight Shall be thy doom! 1786. Robert Burns. 54 48 42 36 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, 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 4 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, No roving foot shall crush thee here, By Nature's self in white arrayed, Smit with those charms, that must decay, They died, nor were those flowers more gay, 12 |