Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Sydney Dobell. 18241874767. 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. |