Of the poets of the seventeenth century I need only make one short quotation from Dryden—
"And then the band of flutes began to play,
To which a lady sang a tirelay:
And still at every close she would repeat
The burden of the song—'The Daisy is so sweet,
The Daisy is so sweet'—when she began
The troops of knights and dames continued on
The consort; and the voice so charmed my ear
And soothed my soul that it was heaven to hear."
I need not dwell on the other poets of the seventeenth century. In most of them a casual allusion to the Daisy may be found, but little more. Nor need I dwell at all on the poets of the eighteenth century. In the so-called Augustan age of poetry, the Daisy could not hope to attract any attention. It was the correct thing if they had to speak of the country to speak of the "Daisied" or "Daisy-spangled" meads, but they could not condescend to any nearer approach to the little flower. If they had they would have found that they had chosen their epithet very badly. I never yet saw a "Daisy-spangled" meadow.[370:1] The flowers may be there, but the long Grasses effectually hide them. And so I come per saltum to the end of the eighteenth century, and at once to Burns, who brought the Daisy again into notice. He thus regrets the uprooting of the Daisy by his plough—
"Wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flower,
Thou'st met me in an evil hour;
For I must crush amongst the stour
Thy slender stem.
To spare thee now is past my power,
Thou bonny gem.
Cold blew the bitter, biting north,
Upon thy humble birth,
Yet cheerfully thou venturest forth
Amid the storm,
Scarce reared above the Parent-earth
Thy tender form.
The flaunting flowers our gardens yield
High sheltering woods and walks must shield;
But thou, between the random bield
Of clod or stone,
Adorn'st the rugged stubble field,
Unseen, alone.
There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snowy bosom sunward spread,
Thou lift'st thy unassuming head
In humble guise;
But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!"
With Burns we may well join Clare, another peasant poet from Northamptonshire, whose poems are not so much known as they deserve to be. His allusions to wild flowers always mark his real observation of them, and his allusions to the Daisy are frequent; thus—
"Smiling on the sunny plain
The lovely Daisies blow,
Unconscious of the careless feet
That lay their beauties low."
Again, alluding to his own obscurity—