THE DAISY.
I
The Daisy blossoms on the rocks,
Amid the purple heath;
It blossoms on the river's banks,
That thrids the glens beneath:
The eagle, at his pride of place,
Beholds it by his nest;
And, in the mead, it cushions soft
The lark's descending breast.
II
Before the cuckoo, earliest spring
Its silver circlet knows,
When greening buds begin to swell,
And zephyr melts the snows;
And when December's breezes howl
Along the moorlands bare,
And only blooms the Christmas rose,
The Daisy still is there!
III
Samaritan of flowers! to it
All races are alike,—
The Switzer on his glacier height,
The Dutchman by his Dyke,
The seal-skin vested Esquimaux,
Begirt with icy seas,
And, underneath his burning noon,
The parasol'd Chinese.
IV
The emigrant on distant shore,
'Mid scenes and faces strange,
Beholds it flowering in the sward,
Where'er his footsteps range;
And when his yearning, home-sick heart
Would bow to its despair,
It reads his eye a lesson sage,
That God is everywhere!
V
Stars are the Daisies that begem
The blue fields of the sky,
Beheld by all, and everywhere,
Bright prototypes on high:—
Bloom on, then, unpretending flower!
And to the waverer be
An emblem of St Paul's content,
St Stephen's constancy.
