Daisy
WHERE the thistle lifts a purple crownSix foot out of the turf,And the harebell shakes on the windy hill—O the breath of the distant surf!—
The hills look over on the South,And southward dreams the sea;And, with the sea-breeze hand in hand,Came innocence and she.
Where ’mid the gorse the raspberryRed for the gatherer springs,Two children did we stray and talkWise, idle, childish things.
She listened with big-lipped surprise,Breast-deep mid flower and spine:Her skin was like a grape, whose veinsRun snow instead of wine.
She knew not those sweet words she spake,Nor knew her own sweet way;But there’s never a bird, so sweet a songThronged in whose throat that day!
Oh, there were flowers in StorringtonOn the turf and on the spray;But the sweetest flower on Sussex hillsWas the Daisy-flower that day!
Her beauty smoothed earth’s furrowed face!She gave me tokens three:—A look, a word of her winsome mouth,And a wild raspberry.
A berry red, a guileless look,A still word,—strings of sand!And yet they made my wild, wild heartFly down to her little hand.
For standing artless as the air,And candid as the skies,She took the berries with her hand,And the love with her sweet eyes.
The fairest things have fleetest end:Their scent survives their close,But the rose’s scent is bitternessTo him that loved the rose!
She looked a little wistfully,Then went her sunshine way:—The sea’s eye had a mist on it,And the leaves fell from the day.
She went her unremembering way,She went and left in meThe pang of all the partings gone,And partings yet to be.
She left me marvelling why my soulWas sad that she was glad;At all the sadness in the sweet,The sweetness in the sad.
Still, still I seemed to see her, stillLook up with soft replies,And take the berries with her hand,And the love with her lovely eyes.
Nothing begins, and nothing ends,That is not paid with moan;For we are born in other’s pain,And perish in our own.