TO THE DAISY. In youth from rock to rock I went, Most pleas'd when most uneasy; But now my own delights I make, When soothed a while by milder airs, That thinly shades his few grey hairs; Whole summer fields are thine by right; Doth in thy crimson head delight In shoals and bands, a morrice train, Thou greet'st the Traveller in the lane; If welcome once thou count'st it gain; Thou art not daunted, Nor car'st if thou be set at naught; And oft alone in nooks remote We meet thee, like a pleasant thought, When such are wanted. Be Violets in their secret mews Proud be the Rose, with rains and dews Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim, Yet hast not gone without thy fame; If to a rock from rains he fly, Near the green holly, And wearily at length should fare; Thou art a Friend at hand, to scare His melancholy. B 2 A hundred times, by rock or bower, Some steady love; some brief delight; 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. When, smitten by the morning ray, Then, chearful Flower! my spirits play At dusk, I've seldom mark'd thee press And all day long I number yet, To thee am owing; An instinct call it, a blind sense; Coming one knows not how nor whence, |