Green Things Growing 1461 All are at one now, roses and lovers, Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea. Not a breath of the time that has been hovers In the air now soft with a summer to be. Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter Here death may deal not again forever; Here change may come not till all change end. From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead. Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909] GREEN THINGS GROWING O THE green things growing, the green things growing, I should like to live, whether I smile or grieve, Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing. O the fluttering and the pattering of those green things growing! How they talk each to each, when none of us are knowing; In the wonderful white of the weird moonlight Or the dim dreamy dawn when the cocks are crowing. I love, I love them so-my green things growing! And in the rich store of their blossoms glowing But if I must be gathered for the angel's sowing, Dinah Maria Mulock Craik [1826-1887] A CHANTED CALENDAR From "Balder" FIRST came the primrose, Like a maiden looking forth And saw the storms go by. Then came the wind-flower So tottered she, Dishevelled in the wind. Then came the daisies, On the first of May, Like a bannered show's advance Flowers While the crowd runs by the way, 1463 With ten thousand flowers about them they came trooping through the fields. As a happy people come, So came they, As a happy people come When the war has rolled away, With dance and tabor, pipe and drum, 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. With a fillet bound about her brow, A golden fillet round her brow, And rubies in her hair. FLOWERS Sydney Dobell (1824-1874] SPAKE full well, in language quaint and olden Stars they are, wherein we read our history, As astrologers and seers of eld; Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery, Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous, Bright and glorious is that revelation, In these stars of earth, these golden flowers. 1 And the Poet, faithful and far-secing, Which is throbbing in his brain and heart. Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, Brilliant hopes, all woven in gorgeous tissues, These in flowers and men are more than seeming; Workings are they of the self-same powers Which the Poet, in no idle dreaming, Seeth in himself and in the flowers. Everywhere about us are they glowing, Some like stars, to tell us Spring is born; Others, their blue eyes with tears o'erflowing, Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn; Not alone in Spring's armorial bearing, Not alone in meadows and green alleys, Not alone in her vast dome of glory, Flowers In the cottage of the rudest peasant; In ancestral homes, whose crumbling towers, Speaking of the Past unto the Present, Tell us of the ancient Games of Flowers; In all places, then, and in all seasons, 1465 Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings, And with childlike, credulous affection, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882] FLOWERS I WILL not have the mad Clytie, Whose head is turned by the sun; The tulip is a courtly quean, The pea is but a wanton witch, Nor will I dreary rosemarye, That always mourns the dead; But I will woo the dainty rose, With her cheeks of tender red. The lily is all in white, like a saint, And the daisy's cheek is tipped with a blush, |