To cheer my lonely cabin and to talk to me of home.
Not double daffodils I took, but single—freshly come
From wintry village fields. I hate the dowager display,
That spoils sweet nature’s manner, and with bold and stately stare
Arrays in artificial pomp the fashionable square.
Not for me only were those gifts. I marked where children clung,
Warm and close-pressed, around a mother seeking distant lands.
One flower I chose apart and placed in tiny baby hands,
When soon it lay in fragments, on the wet deck torn and flung.
Dear child! she only broke her latest toy. What should she know