Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

V. Trees: Flowers: Plants

To a Mountain Daisy

Robert Burns (1759–1796)

WEE, modest, crimson-tippèd flower,

Thou ’s met me in an evil hour,

For I maun crush amang the stoure

Thy slender stem;

To spare thee now is past my power,

Thou bonny gem.

Alas! it ’s no thy neebor sweet,

The bonnie lark, companion meet,

Bending thee ’mang the dewy weet,

Wi’ spreckled breast,

When upward springing, blithe to greet

The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north

Upon thy early, humble birth;

Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth

Amid the storm,

Scarce reared above the parent earth

Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield

High sheltering woods and wa’s maun shield:

But thou beneath the random bield

O’ clod or stane,

Adorns the histie stibble-fleld,

Unseen, alane.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,

Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,

Thou lifts thy unassuming head

In humble guise;

But now the share uptears thy bed,

And low thou lies!

Such is the fate of artless maid,

Sweet floweret of the rural shade!

By love’s simplicity betrayed,

And guileless trust,

Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid

Low i’ the dust.

Such is the fate of simple bard,

On life’s rough ocean luckless starred!

Unskilful he to note the card

Of prudent lore,

Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,

And whelm him o’er!

Such fate to suffering worth is given,

Who long with wants and woes has striven,

By human pride or cunning driven

To misery’s brink,

Till, wrenched of every stay but Heaven,

He, ruined, sink!

Even thou who mourn’st the daisy’s fate,

That fate is thine,—no distant date:

Stern Ruin’s ploughshare drives, elate,

Full on thy bloom,

Till crushed beneath the furrow’s weight

Shall be thy doom!