Marigold
Grief
Open afresh your round of starry folds,
Ye ardent marigolds!
Dry up the moisture from your golden lids,
For great Apollo bids
That in these days your praises should be sung
On many harps, which he has lately strung;
And when again your dewiness he kisses,
Tell him, I have you in my world of blisses:
So haply when I rove in some far vale,
His mightly voice may come upon the gale.
Clematis
Mental Beauty
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases;
it will never
Pass into nothingness;
but still will keep
A bower quiet for us,
and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to earth.
John Keats
1795-1821
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Lavender
Distrust
And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,
In blanched lined, smooth, and lavender'd,
While he from forth the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferr'd
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
From silken Samarcand to cedar'd Lebanon.
Lily of the Valley
Return of Happiness
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,-
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated case.
Orchid
A belle
I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery's song.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true. |
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Primrose
Early Youth
Perdita. Now,
my fair'st friend.
I would I had some flow'rs o' th' spring that might
Become your time of day-and yours, and yours,
That wear upon virgin branches yet
Your maidheads growing.
O Proserpina,
For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let'st fall
From Dis's waggon!...
...pal primroses,
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strenght-a malady
Most incident to maids.
William Shakespeare
1564-1616
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Carnation
Red Carnation - Alas for my pure heart
Striped Carnation - Refusal
Yellow Carnation - Disdain
Perdita. Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on summer's death not on the birth
Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' th 'season
Are our Carnation and streak'd gillyvors
Which some call nature's bastards.
Crown Imperial
Majessty and Power
... bold oxlips, and
The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flow'r-de-luce being one. O, these I lack.
To make you garlands of and my sweet friend
To strew him o'er and o're!
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Rupert Brooke
1887-1915
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Nasturtium
Patriotism
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
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