Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty
road with harmless gold,
First
pledge of blithesome May,
Which children
pluck, and full of pride, uphold,
High-hearted
buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they
Eldorado in
the grass have found,
Which not
the rich earth’s ample round
May match in
wealth, thou art more dear to me
Than all the
prouder summer-blooms may be.
Gold such as
thine ne’er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval
hush of Indian seas,
Nor
wrinkled the lean brow
Of age, to rob the
lover’s heart of ease;
’Tis the
Spring’s largess, which she scatters now
To rich and poor
alike, with lavish hand,
Though most
heart never understand
To take it at
God’s value, but pass by
The offered
wealth with unrewarded eye.
Thou art my
tropics and mine Italy;
To look at thee
unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes
thou givest me
Are in the heart,
and heed not space or time:
Not in mid June
the golden-cuirassed bee
Feels a more
summer-like warm ravishment
In the white
lily’s breezy tent,
His fragrant
Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark
green thy yellow circles burst.
Then think I of
deep shadows on the grass,
Of meadows where in
sun the cattle graze,
Where, as
the breezes pass,
The gleaming rushes
lean a thousand ways,
Of leaves that
slumber in a cloud mass,
Or whiten in the
wind, of waters blue
That from the
distance sparkle through
Some woodland
gap, and of a sky above,
Where one white
cloud like a stray lamb doth move.
My childhood’s
earliest thoughts are linked with thee;
The sight of thee
calls back the robin’s song,
Who, from
the dark old tree
Beside the door,
sang clearly all day long,
And I, secure
in childish piety,
Listened as if I
heard an angel sing
With news
from heaven, which he could bring
Fresh every day
to my untainted ears
When birds and
flowers and I were happy peers.
How like a
prodigal doth nature seem,
When thou, for all
thy gold, so common art!
Thou
teachest me to deem
More sacredly of
every human heart,
Since each
reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could
some wondrous secret show,
Did we but
pay the love we owe,
And with a
child’s undoubting wisdom look
On all these
living pages of God’s book.
To the Dandelion
~John Russell Lowell
