FLOWERS AND TREES

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

Thou blossom, bright with autumn dew,

And colored with the [heaven’s own blue],

That openest when the [quiet light]

[Succeeds] the keen and frosty night;

Thou comest not when violets lean

O’er wandering brooks and springs unseen,

Or columbines, in purple dressed,

Nod o’er the ground bird’s hidden nest.

Thou waitest late, and com’st alone,

When woods are bare and birds are flown,

And frosts and [shortening days portend]

The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye

Look through its fringes to the sky,

Blue—blue—as if that sky let fall

A flower from its [cerulean wall].

I would that thus, when I shall see

The hour of death draw near to me,

Hope, blossoming within my heart,

May look to heaven as I depart.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

For Biography, [see page 41].

Discussion. 1. To whom is this poem addressed? 2. What words tell you the time of year that the fringed gentian blooms? 3. What words does the poet use to tell the color of the gentian? 4. When does it open? 5. What words does Bryant use to mean early morning? 6. When do violets come and in what kind of soil do they grow? 7. What words in the poem tell you this? 8. What does the poet tell you about the violets when he says they “lean,” and about the columbine when he says it “nods”? 9. What signs of approaching winter does the poet mention? 10. Why does the poet repeat “blue” in the third line of stanza 4? 11. Of what is this color a symbol? 12. To what in his life does Bryant compare the end of the year? 13. In this comparison what does the little flower represent?

Phrases

VIOLET! SWEET VIOLET!

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Violet! sweet violet!

Thine eyes are full of tears;

Are they wet

Even yet

With the thought of other years?

Or with gladness are they full,

For the night so beautiful,

And longing for those [far-off spheres]?

Loved-one of my youth thou wast,

Of my merry youth,

And I see,

Tearfully,

All the [fair and sunny past],

All its openness and truth,

Ever fresh and green in thee

As the moss is in the sea.

Thy little heart, that hath with love

Grown colored like the sky above,

On which thou lookest ever,

Can it know

All the woe

Of hope for what returneth never,

All the sorrow and the longing

To these hearts of ours belonging?

Out on it! no foolish pining

For the sky

Dims thine eye,

Or for the stars so calmly shining;

Like thee let this soul of mine

Take hue from that wherefor I long,

Self-stayed and high, serene and strong,

Not satisfied with hoping—but divine.

Violet! dear violet!

Thy blue eyes are only wet

With joy and love of him who sent thee,

And for the [fulfilling sense]

Of that [glad obedience]

Which made thee all that nature meant thee!

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) came of one of the oldest and most influential New England families. Born in an atmosphere of learning, in the old family home in historic Cambridge, at the very doors of Harvard College, he enjoyed every advantage for culture that inherited tastes, ample means, and convenient opportunity could offer. Besides the facilities of the college near by, his father’s library, in which he roamed at will from his very infancy, was one of the richest in the whole country. It is not strange, then, that he grew to be one of the most scholarly Americans of his time.

After leaving college he studied law and opened an office in Boston. He became deeply interested in the political issues of the times and was thus stirred to his first serious efforts in literature. In 1848 appeared his “Vision of Sir Launfal,” founded upon the legend of the Holy Grail, and one of the most spiritually beautiful poems in any literature. Few patriotic poems surpass his “Commemoration Ode.” Besides his poetical works he wrote many essays and books of travel and of criticism. He succeeded Longfellow in his professorship at Harvard, and was the first editor of the Atlantic Monthly. He served successively as Minister to Spain and to England.

Discussion. 1. In the first stanza, how does the poet account for the violet’s eyes being “full of tears”? 2. To the poet what does the violet represent? 3. What vision does the violet bring to the poet? 4. How does the poet account for the color of the violet? 5. What change in the poet’s feeling is noted in the fourth stanza? 6. From what does the poet say his soul must “take hue”? 7. How does the poet in the last lines of the poem account for the violet’s eyes being “full of tears”?

Phrases

TO THE DANDELION

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way,

Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,

First [pledge of blithesome May],

Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,

[High-hearted buccaneers], o’erjoyed that they

An Eldorado in the grass have found,

Which not the rich earth’s ample round

May match in wealth—thou art more dear to me

Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.

Gold such as thine ne’er drew the Spanish prow

Through the [primeval hush] of Indian seas,

Nor wrinkled the lean brow

Of age, to rob the lover’s heart of ease;

’Tis the [spring’s largess], which she scatters now

To rich and poor alike, with [lavish hand],

Though most hearts never understand

To take it at God’s value, but pass by

The offered wealth with [unrewarded eye].

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;

To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;

The eyes thou givest me

Are in the heart, and heed not space or time;

Not in mid June the [golden-cuirassed bee]

Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment

In the white lily’s breezy tent,

His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first

From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass—

Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,

Where, as the breezes pass,

The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways—

Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,

Or whiten in the wind—of waters blue

That from the distance sparkle through

Some woodland gap—and of a sky above,

Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.

My childhood’s earliest thoughts are linked with thee;

The sight of thee calls back the robin’s song,

Who, from the dark old tree

Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,

And I, secure in [childish piety],

Listened as if I heard an angel sing

With news from heaven, which he could bring

Fresh every day to my [untainted ears],

When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.

How like a prodigal doth nature seem,

When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!

Thou teachest me to deem

More sacredly of every human heart,

Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam

Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show

Did we but pay the love we owe,

And with a child’s undoubting wisdom look

On all these [living pages] of God’s book.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

For Biography, [see page 55].

Discussion. 1. In which stanzas does the poet express his love for the dandelion? 2. Which stanzas tell why the dandelion is so dear to the poet? 3. Where must the poet have lived to learn what he tells us in these stanzas? 4. Use your own words for “rich earth’s ample round.” 5. Name some “prouder summer-blooms.” 6. What gold “drew the Spanish prow,” and through what “Indian seas”? 7. What gold wrinkles “the lean brow of age” and robs “the lover’s heart of ease”? How does the dandelion’s gold differ from it? 8. Explain the last three lines of stanza 2, and name any other common things we do not value enough. 9. How can the poet look at the dandelion, but see the tropics and Italy? 10. What “eyes are in the heart, and heed not space or time”? 11. Has a poet more vivid imagination than other people? Why? 12. Compare the expression “eyes are in the heart, and heed not space or time” with that of Wordsworth in “The Daffodils,” page 59, lines 21 and 22, “that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude,” and with that of Trowbridge in “Midwinter,” page 83, lines 15 and 16, “in my inmost ear is heard the music of a holier bird.” 13. Is there a similar idea in these expressions? 14. Which do you like best, “inward eye,” “inmost ear,” or “eyes in the heart”? 15. The dandelion is compared to gold and to sunshine; which comparison had the poet in mind in the first two lines of the last stanza? In the next four lines? 16. The flower reflects its “scanty gleam of heaven” in glowing color; how can human hearts reflect it?

Phrases

THE DAFFODILS

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

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

Outdid 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.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

For Biography, [see page 51].

Discussion. 1. What picture do the first two stanzas give you? 2. To whom does “I” refer? 3. Point out the comparison and the things compared in stanza 1; in stanza 2. 4. Why does the poet use the word “host” when he has already spoken of a “crowd”? 5. Explain the peculiar fitness of the word “sprightly.” 6. What lines particularly express life and gayety?

THE TRAILING ARBUTUS

JOHN G. WHITTIER

I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made

Against the [bitter East] their barricade,

And, guided by its sweet

Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell,

The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell

Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet.

From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines

Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines

Lifted their [glad surprise],

While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees

His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze,

And snow-drifts lingered under April skies.

As, pausing o’er the lonely flower I bent,

I thought of lives thus lowly, [clogged, and pent],

Which yet find room,

Through care and cumber, coldness and decay,

To lend a sweetness to the [ungenial day],

And make the sad earth happier for their bloom.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) was born near the little town of Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the same county as Salem, the birthplace of Hawthorne. The old farmhouse in which Whittier was born was built by the poet’s great-great-grandfather. It still stands to mark the site of the old home. His family were Quakers, sturdy of stature as of character. Whittier’s boyhood was in complete contrast to that of Lowell or Longfellow. He led the life of a typical New England farm boy, used to hard work, no luxuries, and few pleasures. His library consisted of practically one book, the family Bible, which was later supplemented by a copy of Burns’s poems, loaned him by the district schoolmaster. Whittier is often compared with Burns in the simple homeliness of his style, his patriotism, his fiery indignation at wrong, and his sympathy with the humble and the oppressed.

Discussion. 1. Where did the poet find “the trailing spring flower”? 2. Have you found it? Where? When? 3. What beautiful thought came to the poet while he bent over the arbutus? 4. Have you known lowly lives that made the earth happier by their presence? 5. The poet found the lowly flower that lends “sweetness to the ungenial day”; can we find the lowly person who “makes the earth happier”? 6. What does Nature teach through the lowly trailing arbutus? 7. What other selections by this author have you read?

Phrases

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY

ROBERT BURNS

Wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flow’r,

Thou’s met me in an evil hour;

For I maun[1] I crush amang the stoure[2]

Thy slender stem.

To spare thee now is past my pow’r,

Thou bonnie[3] gem.

Alas! it’s no thy neebor sweet,

The bonnie Lark, [companion meet],

Bending thee ’mang the dewy weet,[4]

Wi’ speckl’d breast!

When upward-springing, blythe, 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 rear’d above the [parent-earth]

Thy tender form.

The flaunting flow’rs our gardens yield,

High shelt’ring woods and wa’s[5] maun shield.

But thou, beneath the random bield[6]

O’ clod or stane,

Adorns the histie[7] stibble[8]-field,

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 simple Bard,

On life’s rough ocean [luckless starr’d]!

Unskillful he to note the card[9]

Of [prudent lore],

Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,

And whelm him o’er!

Such fate to suffering worth is giv’n,

Who long with wants and woes has striv’n,

By human pride or cunning driv’n

To mis’ry’s brink,

Till wrench’d of ev’ry stay but Heav’n,

He, ruin’d, sink!

Ev’n thou who mourn’st the Daisy’s fate,

That fate is thine—no distant date;

Stern Ruin’s plowshare drives, elate,

Full on thy bloom,

Till crush’d beneath the furrow’s weight

Shall be thy doom!

[1] maun, must.

[2] stoure, dust.

[3] bonnie, pretty.

[4] weet, wet.

[5] wa’s, walls.

[6] bield, shelter.

[7] histie, barren.

[8] stibble, stubble.

[9] card, compass-face.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. Robert Burns (1759-1796) was a Scottish poet, whose home was near Ayr, in Scotland. His life was short and filled with poverty and hardship, but he saw beauty in the common things of life and had a heart full of sympathy. He wrote this poem at a time when he was in great trouble. His farm was turning out badly, the soil was sour and wet, his crops were failures, and he saw nothing but ruin before him. Burns’s tenderness and sympathy are shown in the feeling expressed in this poem at crushing the flower.

Discussion. 1. How does the English daisy, which Burns describes in the first line of the poem, differ from the daisy that you know, the American daisy? 2. Select and give the meaning of words that illustrate Burns’s use of the Scotch dialect. 3. Picture the incident related in the first stanza. 4. What do you know about the lark that helps you to understand why it is called the daisy’s “companion” and “neebor”? 5. What comparison is made between the daisy and the garden flowers? 6. What “share” is mentioned in stanza 5? 7. What characteristic of the flower does Burns seem to like best?

Phrases

SWEET PEAS

JOHN KEATS

Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight,

With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,

And taper fingers catching at all things,

To bind them all about with tiny rings.

Linger a while upon some bending planks

That lean against a streamlet’s [rushy banks],

And watch intently Nature’s gentle doings;

They will be found softer than [ringdove’s cooings].

How silent comes the water round that bend!

Not the minutest whisper does it send

To the [o’erhanging sallows]; blades of grass

Slowly across the [checkered shadows] pass.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. John Keats (1795-1821) was of humble birth, being the son of a London stablekeeper. He lived at the time of Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Leigh Hunt, from all of whom he gathered inspiration. His years were few, and his fame did not come while he was living. He had a passion for beauty, which found expression in all his poetry. On account of failing health he went to Rome in 1820, where he died the year following.

Discussion. 1. Why does the poet say sweet peas are “on tiptoe for a flight”? 2. What are the wings of the sweet pea? 3. The poet tells of the perfect stillness of the moving water in the stream; what words does he use in lines immediately preceding to prepare you for this stillness? 4. What picture does the last sentence of the poem give you?

Phrases

CHORUS OF FLOWERS

LEIGH HUNT

We are the sweet flowers,

[Born of sunny showers];

Think, whene’er you see us, what our beauty saith;

Utterance, mute and bright,

Of some unknown delight,

We fill the air with pleasure by our simple breath.

All who see us love us.

We befit all places.

Unto sorrow we give smiles, and unto graces, graces.

Mark our ways, how noiseless

All, and [sweetly voiceless],

Though the March winds pipe to make our passage clear;

Not a whisper tells

Where our small seed dwells,

Nor is known the moment green when our tips appear.

We [thread the earth] in silence;

In silence build our bowers;

And leaf by leaf in silence show, till we laugh atop sweet flowers.

See and scorn all duller!

Taste how Heaven loves color!

How great Nature, clearly, joys in red and green!

What sweet thoughts she thinks

Of violets and pinks,

And a thousand [flashing hues] made solely to be seen;

See her whitest lilies

Chill the silver showers;

And what a red mouth has her rose, the woman of her flowers!

Uselessness divinest,

Of a use the finest,

Painteth us, the teachers of the end of use.

Travelers, weary-eyed,

Bless us far and wide;

Unto sick and prisoned thoughts we give sudden truce.

Not a poor town window

Loves its [sickliest planting],

But its wall speaks loftier truth than [Babylonian vaunting].

Sagest yet the uses

Mixed with our sweet juices,

Whether man or may-fly profits of the balm.

As fairy fingers healed

Knights of the olden field,

We hold cups of mightiest force to give the wildest calm.

E’en the terror, poison,

Hath its plea for blooming;

Life it gives to [reverent lips], though [death to the presuming].

And oh! our sweet soul-taker,

That thief, the honey-maker,

What a house hath he by the [thymy glen]!

In his talking rooms

How the feasting fumes,

Till his gold-cups overflow to the mouths of men!

The butterflies come aping

Those fine thieves of ours,

And flutter round [our rifled tops] like tickled flowers with flowers.

See those tops, how beauteous!

What fair service duteous

Round some idol waits, as on their lord the Nine?

Elfin court ’twould seem,

And taught, perchance, that dream

Which the old Greek mountain dreamt upon nights divine;

To expound such wonder,

Human speech avails not,

Yet there dies no poorest weed that such a glory exhales not.

Think of all these treasures,

Matchless works and pleasures,

Every one a marvel, more than thought can say;

Then think in what bright showers

We thicken fields and bowers,

And with what heaps of sweetness half stifle wanton May.

Think of the mossy forests

By the bee-birds haunted,

And all those [Amazonian plains], lone lying, as enchanted.

Trees themselves are ours;

Fruits are born of flowers;

Peach and roughest nut were blossoms in the spring.

The lusty bee knows well

The news, and [comes pell-mell]

And dances in the bloomy thicks with [darksome antheming].

Beneath the very burden

Of [planet-pressing ocean]

We wash our smiling cheeks in peace, a thought for meek devotion.

Who shall say that flowers

Dress not heaven’s own bowers?

Who its love without them can fancy—or sweet floor?

Who shall even dare

To say we sprang not there,

And came not down, that Love might bring one piece of heaven the more?

Oh! pray believe that angels

From those [blue dominions]

Brought us in their white laps down, [’twixt their golden pinions].

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biographical and Historical Note. Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) was an English poet, journalist, and essayist. He was a personal friend of Shelley and Byron, and an intimate friend of Keats. His poems and essays are marked by a delightful style.

The “Nine” (stanza 7) refers to the Muses, patronesses of poetry and music, whose lord is Apollo, and who assembled on Mount Parnassus or Mount Helicon, to hold learned discussions on poetry, science, or music.

Discussion. 1. What is a chorus? 2. Who are the singers? 3. What is the purpose of their song? 4. When you look at a flower, what things are you apt to notice about it? 5. Name a poem you have read that tells of the uses of a flower. 6. What poem that you have read in this book celebrates the color of the flower? 7. What familiar custom grows out of the belief that “unto sorrow we give smiles”? That “unto graces [we give] graces”? 8. For what purpose are flowers in “a thousand flashing hues”? 9. What things are compared in the last line of stanza 4? 10. What uses of flowers are pointed out in stanza 5? 11. In stanza 7 what is compared with the “Nine” muses? 12. Read the lines that tell what lesson the sea-weeds teach. 13. What does the last stanza suggest as a possible source and use of flowers? 14. Which stanza do you like best?

Phrases

TREES

JOYCE KILMER

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree;

A tree whose [hungry mouth] is prest

Against the [earth’s sweet flowing breast];

A tree that [looks at God all day],

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear

A [nest of robins in her hair];

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) was born in New Brunswick, N. J. He was one of the first Americans to be deeply moved by Germany’s challenge to humanity. He gave up his journalistic career in New York, and enlisted seventeen days after the United States declared war. He was attached to the Intelligence Department of the army, one of his duties being to precede the troops before an attack and find out the positions of the enemy guns. He served during almost the whole of the battle of the Marne until August first, 1918, when he received a mortal wound. Kilmer was the first American man of letters to be killed in the war. At the time of his enlistment he was the editor of poetry for the Literary Digest.

Discussion. 1. Do you agree with the poet’s conclusion given in the first stanza? 2. What is the most beautiful poem you have read? 3. What fact relating to the tree does the second couplet tell? The third couplet? The fourth? The fifth? 4. What does the last couplet tell you?

Phrases