WORDS IN BLOOM: FLOWER POEMS

                           Here are the poems we will be discussing at 7 pm, August 23. (Register by clicking here.)  If you want a version you can print, just contact me and I will send you a Word file.

 

 

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

 

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

 

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

 

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

 

                                                              --William Wordsworth

 

 

 

 

Evening Primrose

 

When once the sun sinks in the west,

And dewdrops pearl the evening's breast;

Almost as pale as moonbeams are,

Or its companionable star,

The evening primrose opes anew

Its delicate blossoms to the dew;

And, hermit-like, shunning the light,

Wastes its fair bloom upon the night,

Who, blindfold to its fond caresses,

Knows not the beauty it possesses;

Thus it blooms on while night is by;

When day looks out with open eye,

Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun,

It faints and withers and is gone.

 

                                                              --John Clare

 

 

 

Pigmy seraphs—gone astray—

Velvet people from Vevay—

Belles from some lost summer day—

Bees exclusive Coterie—

 

Paris could not lay the fold

Belted down with Emerald—

Venice could not show a check

Of a tint so lustrous meek—

Never such an ambuscade

As of briar and leaf displayed

For my little damask maid—

 

I had rather wear her grace

Than an Earl's distinguished face—

I had rather dwell like her

Than be "Duke of Exeter"—

Royalty enough for me

To subdue the Bumblebee.

 

-- Emily Dickinson

 

It will be Summer—eventually.

Ladies—with parasols—

Sauntering Gentlemen—with Canes—

And little Girls—with Dolls—

 

Will tint the pallid landscape—

As 'twere a bright Bouquet—

Thro' drifted deep, in Parian—

The Village lies—today—

 

The Lilacs—bending many a year—

Will sway with purple load—

The Bees—will not despise the tune—

Their Forefathers—have hummed—

 

The Wild Rose—redden in the Bog—

The Aster—on the Hill

Her everlasting fashion—set—

And Covenant Gentians—frill—

 

Till Summer folds her miracle—

As Women—do—their Gown—

Or Priests—adjust the Symbols—

When Sacrament—is done –

 

                                                                        --Emily Dickinson

 

 

Carnations

 

Pale blossoms, each balanced on a single jointed stem,

And leaves curled back in elaborate Corinthian scrolls;

And the air cool, as if drifting down from wet hemlocks,

Or rising out of ferns not far from water,

A crisp hyacinthine coolness,

Like that clear autumnal weather of eternity,

The windless perpetual morning above a September cloud.

 

                                                   --Theodore Roethke

 

 

The Last Chrysanthemum

 

Why should this flower delay so long

         To show its tremulous plumes?

Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,

         When flowers are in their tombs.

 

Through the slow summer, when the sun

         Called to each frond and whorl

That all he could for flowers was being done,

         Why did it not uncurl?

 

It must have felt that fervid call

         Although it took no heed,

Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,

         And saps all retrocede.

 

Too late its beauty, lonely thing,

         The season's shine is spent,

Nothing remains for it but shivering

         In tempests turbulent.

 

Had it a reason for delay,

         Dreaming in witlessness

That for a bloom so delicately gay

         Winter would stay its stress?

 

- I talk as if the thing were born

         With sense to work its mind;

Yet it is but one mask of many worn

         By the Great Face behind.

 

                                                              --Thomas Hardy

 

 

Celandine

Thinking of her had saddened me at first,
Until I saw the sun on the celandines lie
Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame,
A living thing, not what before I nursed,
The shadow I was growing to love almost,
The phantom, not the creature with bright eye
That I had thought never to see, once lost.

She found the celandines of February
Always before us all. Her nature and name
Were like those flowers, and now immediately
For a short swift eternity back she came,
Beautiful, happy, simply as when she wore
Her brightest bloom among the winter hues
Of all the world; and I was happy too,
Seeing the blossoms and the maiden who
Had seen them with me Februarys before,
Bending to them as in and out she trod
And laughed, with locks sweeping the mossy sod.

But this was a dream; the flowers were not true,
Until I stooped to pluck from the grass there
One of five petals and I smelt the juice
Which made me sigh, remembering she was no more,
Gone like a never perfectly recalled air.

                                                              --Edward Thomas

 

 The Tuft of Flowers

I went to turn the grass once after one

Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

 

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen

Before I came to view the levelled scene.

 

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;

I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

 

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,

And I must be, as he had been,—alone,

 

‘As all must be,’ I said within my heart,

‘Whether they work together or apart.’

 

But as I said it, swift there passed me by

On noiseless wing a ‘wildered butterfly,

 

Seeking with memories grown dim o’er night

Some resting flower of yesterday’s delight.

 

And once I marked his flight go round and round,

As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

 

And then he flew as far as eye could see,

And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

 

I thought of questions that have no reply,

And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

 

But he turned first, and led my eye to look

At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

 

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared

Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

 

I left my place to know them by their name,

Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

 

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,

By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

 

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.

But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

 

The butterfly and I had lit upon,

Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

 

That made me hear the wakening birds around,

And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

 

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;

So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

 

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,

And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

 

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech

With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

 

‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,

‘Whether they work together or apart.’

                                                        --Robert Frost

 

 

 

 

 

The Daisy

 

Having so rich a treasury, so fine a hoard
Of beauty water-bright before my eyes,
I plucked the daisy only, simple and white
In its fringed frock and brooch of innocent gold.

So is all equilibrium restored:
I leave the noontide wealth of richer bloom
To the destroyer, the impatient ravisher,
The intemperate bee, the immoderate bird.

Of all this beauty felt and seen and heard
I can be frugal and devout and plain,
Deprived so long of light and air and grass,
The shyest flower is sweetest to uncover.

How poor I was: and yet no richer lover
Discovered joy so deep in earth and water;
And in the air that fades from blue to pearl,
And in a flower white-frocked like my small daughter.

 

                                                                                    --Marya Zaturenska

 

 

this is the garden: colors come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night’s outer wing
strong silent greens silently lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden: pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms ,and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.

This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death’s blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured, as among
the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.

                                                            --e.e. cummings

 

 

I Planned to Have a Border of Lavender

 

I planned to have a border of lavender

but planted the bank too of lavender

and now my whole crazy garden

      is grown in lavender

 

it smells so sharp heady and musky

of lavender, and the hue of only

lavender is all my garden up

     into the gray rocks.

 

When forth I go from here the heedless lust

I squander—and in vain for I am stupid

and miss the moment—it has blest me silly

     when forth I go

 

and when, sitting as gray as these gray rocks

among the lavender, I breathe the lavender's

tireless squandering, I liken it

     to my silly lusting,

 

I liken my silly indefatigable

lusting to the lavender which has grown over

all my garden, banks and borders, up

     into the gray rocks

 

                                                             -- Paul Goodman

 

 

The Ungrateful Garden

Midas watched the golden crust
That formed over his steaming sores,
Hugged his agues, loved his lust,
But damned to hell the out-of-doors

Where blazing motes of sun impaled
The serried roses, metal-bright.
“Those famous flowers,” Midas wailed,
“Have scorched my retina with light.”

This gift, he’d thought, would gild his joys,
Silt up the waters of his grief;
His lawns a wilderness of noise,
The heavy clang of leaf on leaf.

Within, the golden cup is good
To lift, to sip the yellow mead.
Outside, in summer’s rage, the rude
Gold thorn has made his fingers bleed.

“I strolled my halls in golden shift,
As ruddy as a lion s meat.
Then I rushed out to share my gift,
And golden stubble cut my feet.”

Dazzled with wounds, he limped away
To climb into his golden bed,
Roses, roses can betray.
“Nature is evil,” Midas said.

                                                   -- Carolyn Kizer

 

 

Queen-Anne’s Lace

Her body is not so white as

anemony petals nor so smooth—nor

so remote a thing. It is a field

of the wild carrot taking

the field by force; the grass

does not raise above it.

Here is no question of whiteness,

white as can be, with a purple mole

at the center of each flower.

Each flower is a hand’s span

of her whiteness. Wherever

his hand has lain there is

a tiny purple blemish. Each part

is a blossom under his touch

to which the fibers of her being

stem one by one, each to its end,

until the whole field is a

white desire, empty, a single stem,

a cluster, flower by flower,

a pious wish to whiteness gone over—

or nothing.

 

                                                                 --William Carlos Williams

 

 

To Paint a Water Lily                          Ted Hughes

 

A green level of lily leaves

Roofs the pond's chamber and paves

 

The flies' furious arena: study

These, the two minds of this lady.

 

First observe the air's dragonfly

That eats meat, that bullets by

 

Or stands in space to take aim;

Others as dangerous comb the hum

 

Under the trees. There are battle-shouts

And death-cries everywhere hereabouts

 

But inaudible, so the eyes praise

To see the colours of these flies

 

Rainbow their arcs, spark, or settle

Cooling like beads of molten metal

 

Through the spectrum. Think what worse

Is the pond-bed's matter of course;

 

Prehistoric bedragoned times

Crawl that darkness with Latin names,

 

Have evolved no improvements there,

Jaws for heads, the set stare,

 

Ignorant of age as of hour-

Now paint the long-necked lily-flower

 

Which, deep in both worlds, can be still

As a painting, trembling hardly at all

 

Though the dragonfly alight,

Whatever horror nudge her root.

 

                                                              --Ted Hughes

 

 

Irises

          1.
In the night, in the wind, at the edge of rain,
I find five irises, and call them lovely.
As if a woman, once, lay by them awhile,
then woke, rose, went, the memory of hair
lingers on their sweet tongues.

I’d like to tear these petals with my teeth.
I’d like to investigate these hairy selves,
their beauty and indifference. They hold
their breath all their lives
and open, open.

          2.
We are not lovers, not brother and sister,
though we drift hand in hand through a hall
thrilling and burning as thought and desire
expire, and, over this dream of life,
this life of sleep, we waken dying—
violet becoming blue, growing
black, black—all that
an iris ever prays, 

when it prays

to be

                                                              Li-Young Lee

 

 

Tulips

 

The tulips make me want to paint,

Something about the way they drop

Their petals on the tabletop

And do not wilt so much as faint,

 

Something about their burnt-out hearts,

Something about their pallid stems

Wearing decay like diadems,

Parading finishes like starts,

 

Something about the way they twist

As if to catch the last applause,

And drink the moment through long straws,

And how, tomorrow, they’ll be missed.

 

The way they’re somehow getting clearer,

The tulips make me want to see—

The tulips make the other me

(The backwards one who’s in the mirror,

 

The one who can’t tell left from right),

Glance now over the wrong shoulder

To watch them get a little older

And give themselves up to the light.

                                                                            --A. E. Stallings