Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Isabella Valancy Crawford (1850–1887)

Said the Daisy

THERE ne’er was blown out of the yellow east

So fresh, so fair, so sweet a morn as this.

The dear earth decked herself as for a feast;

And, as for me, I trembled with my bliss.

The young grass round me was so rich with dew,

And sang me such sweet, tender strains, as low

The breath of dawn among its tall spikes blew;

But what it sang none but myself can know!

O never came so glad a morn before!

So rosy dimpling burst the infant light,

So crystal pure the air the meadows o’er,

The lark with such young rapture took his flight,

The round world seemed not older by an hour

Than mine own daisy self! I laughed to see

How, when her first red roses paled and died,

The blue sky smiled, and decked her azure lea

With daisy clouds, white, pink-fringed, just like me!

“This is a morn for song,” sang out the lark,

“O silver-tressed beloved!” My golden eye

Watched his brown wing blot out the last star-spark

Amidst the daisy cloudlets of the sky.

“No morn so sweet as this, so pure, so fair—

God’s bud time,” so the oldest whitethorn said,

And she has lived so long; yet here and there

Such fresh white buds begem her ancient head.

And from her thorny bosom all last night

Deep in my dew-sealed sleep I heard a note—

So sweet a voice of anguish and delight

I dreamed a red star had a bird-like throat

And that its rays were music which had crept

’Mid the white scented blossoms of the thorn,

And that to hear her sing the still night wept

With mists and dew until the yellow morn.

I wonder, wonder what the song he sang,

That seemed to drown in melody the vales!

I knew my lark’s song as he skyward sprang,

But only roses know the nightingale’s.

The yellow cowslip bent her honeyed lips

And whispered: “Daisy, wert thou but as high

As I am, thou couldst see the merry ships

On yon blue wondrous field blown gaily by.”

A gay, small wind, arch as a ruddy fox,

Crept round my slender, green and dainty stem,

And piped: “Let me but shake thy silver locks

And free thy bent head from its diadem

Of diamond dew, and thou shalt rise and gaze,

Like the tall cowslips, o’er the rustling grass,

On proud, high cliffs, bright strands and sparkling bays,

And watch the white ships as they gaily pass.”

“Oh, while thou mayst keep thou thy crystal dew!”

Said the aged thorn, where sang the heart of night,

The nightingale: “The sea is very blue,

The sails of ships are wondrous swift and white.

Soon, soon enough thy dew will sparkling die,

And thou, with burning brow and thirsty lips,

Wilt turn the golden circle of thine eye,

Nor joy in them, on ocean and her ships!”

There never flew across the violet hills

A morn so like a dove with jewelled eyes,

With soft wings fluttering like the sound of rills,

And gentle breast of rose and azure dyes.

The purple trumpets of the clover sent

Such rich, dew-loosened perfume, and the bee

Hung like a gold drop in the woodbine’s tent.

What care I for the gay ships and the sea!