count'st it gain;
Thou art not daunted,
Nor car'st if thou be set at nought:
And oft alone in nooks remote
We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,
When such are wanted.

Be violets in their secret mews
The flowers the wanton Zephyrs choose;
Proud be the Rose, with rains and dews
Her head impearling;
Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim,
Yet hast not gone without thy fame;
Thou art indeed by many a claim
The Poet's darling.

If to a rock from rains he fly,
Or, some bright day of April sky,
Imprisoned by hot sunshine, lie
Near the green holly,
And wearily at length should fare;
He needs but look about, and there
Thou art: a friend at hand, to scare
His melancholy.

A hundred times, by rock or bower,
Ere thus I have lain couched an hour,
Have I derived from thy sweet power
Some apprehension;
Some steady love, some brief delight;
Some memory that had taken flight;
Some chime of fancy wrong or right,
Or stray invention.

If stately passions in me burn,
And one chance look to thee should turn,
I drink out of an humbler urn
A lowlier pleasure;
The homely sympathy that heeds
The common life our nature breeds;
A wisdom fitted to the needs
Of hearts at leisure.

Sweet flower! for by that name at last,
When all my reveries are past,
I call thee, and to that cleave fast,
Sweet, silent creature!
That breath'st with me in sun and air,
Do thou, as thou wert wont, repair
My heart with gladness and a share
Of thy meek nature!

With still deeper poetic feeling has that untutored bard of nature, poor
Burns, written of this little flower:

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY,

_On turning one down with the plough, in April, 1786._

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem;
To spare thee now is past my power,
Thou bonnie gem!

Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,
The bonnie Lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet,
Wi' speckl'd breast,
When upward springing, blithe, to greet
The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter biting north
Upon thy early, humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth