They flourish like the morning flow’r,
In beauty’s pride array’d;
But long ere night, cut down, it lies
All wither’d and decay’d.
XLVI.
TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY,
ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH IN
APRIL, 1786.
[This was not the original title of this sweet poem: I have a copy in the handwriting of Burns entitled “The Gowan.” This more natural name he changed as he did his own, without reasonable cause; and he changed it about the same time, for he ceased to call himself Burness and his poem “The Gowan,” in the first edition of his works. The field at Mossgiel where he turned down the Daisy is said to be the same field where some five months before he turned up the Mouse; but this seems likely only to those who are little acquainted with tillage—who think that in time and place reside the chief charms of verse; and who feel not the beauty of “The Daisy,” till they seek and find the spot on which it grew. Sublime morality and the deepest emotions of the soul pass for little with those who remember only what the genius loves to forget.]
Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow’r,
Thou’s met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem:
To spare thee now is past my pow’r,
Thou bonnie gem.
Alas! it’s no thy neebor sweet,
The bonnie lark, companion meet!
Bending thee ‘mang the dewy weet,
Wi’ spreckl’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.