Yet, in spite of the general association of Daisies with St. Margaret, Mrs. Jameson says that she has seen one, and only one, picture of St. Margaret with Daisies.
The poetry or poetical history of the Daisy is very curious. It begins with Chaucer, whose love of the flower might almost be called an idolatry. But, as it begins with Chaucer, so, for a time, it almost ends with him. Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton scarcely mention it. It holds almost no place in the poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; but, at the close of the eighteenth century, it has the good luck to be uprooted by Burns's plough, and he at once sings its dirge and its beauties; and then the flower at once becomes a celebrity. Wordsworth sings of it in many a beautiful verse; and I think it is scarcely too much to say that since his time not an English poet has failed to pay his homage to the humble beauty of the Daisy. I do not purpose to take you through all these poets—time and knowledge would fail me to introduce you to them all. I shall but select some of those which I consider best worth selection. I begin, of course, with Chaucer, and even with him I must content myself with a selection—
"Of all the floures in the mede,
Then love I most those floures white and redde;
Such that men callen Daisies in our town.
To them I have so great affection,
As I said erst when comen is the Maye,
That in my bedde there dawneth me no daie,
That I n'am up and walking in the mede
To see this floure against the sunné sprede.
When it upriseth early by the morrow,
That blessed sight softeneth all my sorrow.
So glad am I, when that I have presence
Of it, to done it all reverence—
As she that is of all floures the floure,
Fulfilled of all virtue and honoure;
And ever ylike fair and fresh of hue,
And ever I love it, and ever ylike new,
And ever shall, till that mine heart die,
All swear I not, of this I will not lye.
There loved no wight hotter in his life,
And when that it is eve, I run blithe,
As soon as ever the sun gaineth west,
To see this floure, how it will go to rest.
For fear of night, so hateth she darkness,
Her cheer is plainly spread in the brightness
Of the sunne, for there it will unclose;
Alas, that I ne had English rhyme or prose
Suffisaunt this floure to praise aright."
I could give you several other quotations from Chaucer, but I will content myself with this, for I think unbounded admiration of a flower can scarcely go further than the lines I have read to you.
In an early poem published by Ritson is the following—
"Lenten ys come with love to toune
With blosmen ant with briddes roune
That al thys blisse bryngeth;
Dayeseyes in this dales,
Notes suete of nyghtegales
Vch foul song singeth."
Ancient Songs and Ballads, vol. i, p. 63.
Stephen Hawes, who lived in the time of Henry VII., wrote a poem called the "Temple of Glass." In that temple he tells us—
"I saw depycted upon a wall,
From est to west, fol many a fayre image
Of sundry lovers. . . . ."
And among these lovers—