The Primrose. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)

'Tis the first primrose! see how meek,
Yet beautiful, it looks;
As just a lesson it may teach
As that we read in books.

While gardens show in flowering pride
The lily's stately ranks,
It loves its modest head to hide
Beneath the bramble banks.

And so the little cottage maid
May bloom unseen and die;
But she, when transient flowerets fade,
Shall live with Christ on high.

William Lisle Bowles

William Lisle Bowles was an English cleric, poet, and critic who was born on 24th September 1762 and died on 7th April 1850. He is best known for his sonnets, which were highly praised by the Romantic poets. Bowles's work significantly influenced Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Besides his poetry, he wrote extensively on literary criticism and editing. Bowles spent much of his clerical career in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.

William Lisle Bowles

Summer's Evening. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

On Resigning A Scholarship Of Trinity College, Oxford, And Retiring To A Country Curacy.

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

On The Death Of Dr Burgess, The Late Bishop Of Salisbury.

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

Blind Fiddler - Wilkie (Exhibition, 1807.)

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

My Primrose

My sweet primrose with thy open face,
And with fringe-like leaves, without a trace
Of coarseness, either in flower or stem,
Among all my plants thou art the gem.

My lovely lilies soon disappear;
Thy bloom is constant through all the year;
In summer's heat and winter's cold,
Undimmed the light of thy floral gold.

Or if thy color be pink, or blue,
Or white as snow, thou art ever true;
My room is bright with thy smiling eyes,
And thy fragrance rare I also prize.

Thou hast done thy part, my little pet--
Let me keep thy roots forever wet,
But guard with care all thy tender leaves
And growing crown, which the earth-crust heaves.

Thou dost heaven-ward tend, aspiring high,
To kiss the stars in the vaulted sky,
And they look down from ...

Joseph Horatio Chant

The Primrose Of The Rock

A Rock there is whose homely front
The passing traveller slights;
Yet there the glow-worms hang their lamps,
Like stars, at various heights;
And one coy Primrose to that Rock
The vernal breeze invites.

What hideous warfare hath been waged,
What kingdoms overthrown,
Since first I spied that Primrose-tuft
And marked it for my own;
A lasting link in Natures chain
From highest heaven let down!

The flowers, still faithful to the stems,
Their fellowship renew;
The stems are faithful to the root,
That worketh out of view;
And to the rock the root adheres
In every fibre true.

Close clings to earth the living rock,
Though threatening still to fall:
The earth is constant to her sphere;
And God upholds them all:
So blooms ...

William Wordsworth

The Primrose

Ask me why I send you here
The firstling of the infant year;
Ask me why I send to you
This primrose all bepearled with dew:
I straight will whisper in your ears,
The sweets of love are washed with tears.
Ask me why this flower doth show
So yellow, green, and sickly too;
Ask me why the stalk is weak
And bending, yet it doth not break:
I must tell you, these discover
What doubts and fears are in a lover.

Thomas Carew

A Wren's Nest

Among the dwellings framed by birds
In field or forest with nice care,
Is none that with the little Wren's
In snugness may compare.

No door the tenement requires,
And seldom needs a laboured roof;
Yet is it to the fiercest sun
Impervious, and storm-proof.

So warm, so beautiful withal,
In perfect fitness for its aim,
That to the Kind by special grace
Their instinct surely came.

And when for their abodes they seek
An opportune recess,
The hermit has no finer eye
For shadowy quietness.

These find, 'mid ivied abbey-walls,
A canopy in some still nook;
Others are pent-housed by a brae
That overhangs a brook.

There to the brooding bird her mate
Warbles by fits his low clear song;
And by the busy streamlet bo...

William Wordsworth

To The Small Celandine

Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there's a sun that sets,
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are violets,
They will have a place in story:
There's a flower that shall be mine,
'Tis the little Celandine.

Eyes of some men travel far
For the finding of a star;
Up and down the heavens they go,
Men that keep a mighty rout!
I'm as great as they, I trow,
Since the day I found thee out,
Little Flower! I'll make a stir,
Like a sage astronomer.

Modest, yet withal an Elf
Bold, and lavish of thyself;
Since we needs must first have met
I have seen thee, high and low,
Thirty years or more, and yet
'Twas a face I did not know;
Thou hast now, go where I may,
Fifty greetings...

William Wordsworth

The Primrose

Ask me why I send you here
This sweet Infanta of the year?
Ask me why I send to you
This Primrose, thus bepearl'd with dew?
I will whisper to your ears,
The sweets of love are mixt with tears.

Ask me why this flower does show
So yellow-green, and sickly too?
Ask me why the stalk is weak
And bending, yet it doth not break?
I will answer,these discover
What fainting hopes are in a lover.

Robert Herrick