POETRY.
WILD FLOWERS. LONDON counties, so they say, 'Plain their wild flowers torn away. Scarce a primrose or bluebell In the spots they loved so well. Every flower and every fern In a pot must serve a turn, Just to dash with something sweet The languor of the stately street ; Just to catch the jaded eye With its rustic mimicry. Thus with woodland births of spring, Nature, costermongering, Brings a flavour quaintly wry To Mayfair from Arcady.
A far daintier sight, I wis, Ye may see than such as this.
Lo ! untouched by fashion's rage, Wild flowers still make pilgrimage On a mission soft and kind They have had, time out of mind, When the small town-children stray On a summer holiday.
Serious some, some wild with glee, Make of every flower free, Wonderstruck each little heir At a heritage so fair.
Then the flowers right cheerfully Leave their native haunts to die.
Hotly pressed in little hands, Hyacinths in azure bands Are content to flag and sicken That these little hearts may quicken With the breath of Nature's heart, That the irksome prison smart Of town-durance, for a day, May be wholly smoothed away, And children free from legal rod May strip the garden made by God.
White and yellow, blue and red, Vie to crown each girlish head, To fill each squalid court and lane With joy that overflows again.
Break daffodils their golden rank, The modest primrose leaves her bank, The lily by the river's brim, Meet burden for a poet's hymn, Is fain to quit her gelid root For a strange land of dust and soot, Content if she may win thereby An answering ray from childhood's eye, And haply one day in the year Make life more sweet and heaven more near.
L R.
Previous page
