Follow with May’s fairest flowers.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792–1822.

ON OBSERVING A BLOSSOM

ON THE FIRST OF FEBRUARY.

Sweet flower! that peeping from thy russet stem,

Unfoldest timidly (for in strange sort

This dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering month

Hath borrowed Zephyr’s voice, and gazed on thee

With blue, voluptuous eye); alas, poor flower!

These are but flatteries of the faithless year,