"Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,
Thou'st met me in an evil hour;
For I must crush amongst the stour
Thy slender stem.
To spare thee now is past my power,
Thou bonny gem.

Cold blew the bitter, biting north,
Upon thy humble birth,
Yet cheerfully thou venturest forth
Amid the storm,
Scarce reared above the Parent-earth
Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield
High sheltering woods and walks must shield;
But thou, between the random bield
Of clod or stone,
Adorn'st the rugged stubble field,
Unseen, alone.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snowy bosom sunward spread,
Thou lift'st thy unassuming head
In humble guise;
But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!"

With Burns we may well join Clare, another peasant poet from
Northamptonshire, whose poems are not so much known as they deserve to
be. His allusions to wild flowers always mark his real observation of
them, and his allusions to the Daisy are frequent; thus--

"Smiling on the sunny plain
The lovely Daisies blow,
Unconscious of the careless feet
That lay their beauties low."

Again, alluding to his own obscurity--

"Green turfs allowed forgotten heap,
Is all that I shall have,
Save that the little Daisies creep
To deck my humble grave."

Again, in his description of evening, he does not omit to notice the
closing of the Daisy at sunset--

"Now the blue fog creeps along,
And the birds forget their song;
Flowers now sleep within their hoods,
Daisies button into buds."

And so we come to Wordsworth, whose love of the Daisy almost equalled
Chaucer's. His allusions and addresses to the Daisy are numerous, but I
have only space for a small selection. First, are two stanzas from a
long poem specially to the Daisy--

"When soothed awhile by milder airs,
Thee Winter in the garland wears,
That thinly shades his few gray hairs,
Spring cannot shun thee.
While Summer fields are thine by right,
And Autumn, melancholy wight,
Doth in thy crimson head delight
When rains are on thee.

Child of the year that round dost run
Thy course, bold lover of the sun,
And cheerful