Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Ralph Waldo Emerson, comp. (1803–1882). Parnassus: An Anthology of Poetry. 1880.

To a Mountain Daisy

Robert Burns (1759–1796)

WEE, modest, crimson-tippèd flower,

Thou’s met me in an evil hour;

For I maun crush amang the stoure

To spare thee now is past my power,

Alas! it’s no thy neebor sweet,

The bonnie lark, companion meet!

Bending thee ’mang the dewy weet!

When upward-springing, blythe, to greet

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north

Upon thy early, humble birth;

Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth

Scarce reared above the parent-earth

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield

High sheltering woods and wa’s maun shield;

But thou, beneath the random bield

Adorns the histie stibble-field,

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,

Thy snawy bosom sunward spread,

Thou lifts thy unassuming head

But now the share uptears thy bed,

Such is the fate of artless Maid,

Sweet floweret of the rural shade!

By love’s simplicity betrayed,

Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid

Such is the fate of simple Bard,

On life’s rough ocean luckless starred!

Unskilful he to note the card

Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,

Such fate to suffering worth is given,

Who long with wants and woes has striven,

By human pride or cunning driven

Till, wrenched of every stay but Heaven,

Even thou who mourn’st the daisy’s fate,

That fate is thine—no distant date;

Stern Ruin’s ploughshare drives, elate,

Till crushed beneath the furrow’s weight