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Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Verse  »  767. A Chanted Calendar

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.

Sydney Dobell. 1824–1874

767. A Chanted Calendar

          FIRST came the primrose, 
          On the bank high, 
          Like a maiden looking forth 
          From the window of a tower 
          When the battle rolls below,         5
          So look’d she, 
          And saw the storms go by. 
 
          Then came the wind-flower 
          In the valley left behind, 
          As a wounded maiden, pale  10
          With purple streaks of woe, 
          When the battle has roll’d by 
          Wanders to and fro, 
          So totter’d she, 
          Dishevell’d in the wind.  15
 
          Then came the daisies, 
          On the first of May, 
          Like a banner’d show’s advance 
          While the crowd runs by the way, 
With ten thousand flowers about them they came trooping through the fields.  20
          As a happy people come, 
          So came they, 
          As a happy people come 
          When the war has roll’d away, 
          With dance and tabor, pipe and drum,  25
          And all make holiday. 
 
          Then came the cowslip, 
          Like a dancer in the fair, 
          She spread her little mat of green, 
          And on it danced she.  30
          With a fillet bound about her brow, 
          A fillet round her happy brow, 
          A golden fillet round her brow, 
          And rubies in her hair.