To a Mountain Daisy
BY ROBERT BURNS
(On Turning One Down with the Plow, in April, 1786)
Wee, modest, crimson-tippèd 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
bonie gem.
Alas! it's no thy neibor sweet,
The bonie lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet
Wi'
spreck'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.
The flaunting flowers our gardens yield
High shelt'ring woods an' wa's maun shield:
But thou, beneath the random bield
O'
clod or stane,
Adorns the histie stibble-field
Unseen,
alane.
There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawie-bosom sun-ward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In
humble guise;
But now the share uptears thy bed,
And
low thou lies!
Such is the fate of artless maid,
Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betray'd
And
guileless trust;
Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid
Low
i' the dust.
Such is the fate of simple bard,
On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd!
Unskilful he to note the card
Of
prudent lore,
Till billows rage and gales blow hard,
And
whelm him o'er!
Such fate to suffering Worth is giv'n,
Who long with wants and woes has striv'n,
By human pride or cunning driv'n
To
mis'ry's brink;
Till, wrench'd of ev'ry stay but Heav'n,
He
ruin'd sink!
Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate,
That fate is thine—no distant date;
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate,
Full
on thy bloom,
Till crush'd beneath the furrow's weight
Shall
be thy doom.
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