Wild Asters

In the spring I asked the daisies
If his words were true,
And the clever, clear-eyed daisies
Always knew.

Now the fields are brown and barren,
Bitter autumn blows,
And of all the stupid asters
Not one knows.

Sara Teasdale

Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933) was an American lyric poet. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri and her first poem publication was in 1907. Teasdale's style was characterized by clarity and simplicity, often focusing on themes of love, nature, and death. She won the Columbia University Poetry Society Prize for her 1917 collection Love Songs. Unfortunately, she faced severe health issues and depression towards the end of her life, leading to her suicide in 1933.

Sara Teasdale

I Have Loved Hours At Sea

Sara Teasdale, Simple Poetry

Jewels

Sara Teasdale, Simple Poetry

February Twilight

Sara Teasdale, Simple Poetry

Sappho III

Sara Teasdale, Simple Poetry

English

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The Garden

My heart is a garden tired with autumn,
Heaped with bending asters and dahlias heavy and dark,
In the hazy sunshine, the garden remembers April,
The drench of rains and a snow-drop quick and clear as a spark;

Daffodils blowing in the cold wind of morning,
And golden tulips, goblets holding the rain,
The garden will be hushed with snow, forgotten soon, forgotten,
After the stillness, will spring come again?

Sara Teasdale

The Tell-Tale Flowers

And has the Spring's all glorious eye
No lesson to the mind?
The birds that cleave the golden sky--
Things to the earth resigned--
Wild flowers that dance to every wind--
Do they no memory leave behind?

Aye, flowers! The very name of flowers,
That bloom in wood and glen,
Brings Spring to me in Winter's hours,
And childhood's dreams again.
The primrose on the woodland lea
Was more than gold and lands to me.

The violets by the woodland side
Are thick as they could thrive;
I've talked to them with childish pride
As things that were alive:
I find them now in my distress--
They seem as sweet, yet valueless.

The cowslips on the meadow lea,
How have I run for them!
I looked with wild and childish glee
Upon each golden gem:

John Clare

A Widow's Weeds

A poor old Widow in her weeds
Sowed her garden with wild-flower seeds;
Not too shallow, and not too deep,
And down came April - drip - drip - drip.
Up shone May, like gold, and soon
Green as an arbour grew leafy June.
And now all summer she sits and sews
Where willow herb, comfrey, bugloss blows,
Teasle and pansy, meadowsweet,
Campion, toadflax, and rough hawksbit;
Brown bee orchis, and Peals of Bells;
Clover, burnet, and thyme she smells;
Like Oberon's meadows her garden is
Drowsy from dawn to dusk with bees.
Weeps she never, but sometimes sighs,
And peeps at her garden with bright brown eyes;
And all she has is all she needs -
A poor Old Widow in her weeds.

Walter De La Mare

Weeds

        White with daisies and red with sorrel
            And empty, empty under the sky!--
        Life is a quest and love a quarrel--
            Here is a place for me to lie.

        Daisies spring from damned seeds,
            And this red fire that here I see
        Is a worthless crop of crimson weeds,
            Cursed by farmers thriftily.

        But here, unhated for an hour,
            The sorrel runs in ragged flame,
        The daisy stands, a bastard flower,
            Like flowers that bear an honest name.

        And here a while, where no wind brings
            The baying of a pack athirst,
        May sleep the sleep of blessed things,
            The blood too bright, the brow accurst.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

May

The wind is tossing the lilacs,
The new leaves laugh in the sun,
And the petals fall on the orchard wall,
But for me the spring is done.

Beneath the apple blossoms
I go a wintry way,
For love that smiled in April
Is false to me in May.

Sara Teasdale

Spring's Nosegay

The prim daisy's golden eye
On the fallow land doth lie,
Though the Spring is just begun:
Pewits watch it all the day,
And the skylark's nest of hay
Is there by its dried leaves in the sun.

There the pilewort, all in gold,
'Neath the ridge of finest mould,
Blooms to cheer the ploughman's eye:
There the mouse his hole hath made,
And 'neath the golden shade
Hides secure when the hawk is prowling by.

Here's the speedwell's sapphire blue:
Was there anything more true
To the vernal season still?
Here it decks the bank alone,
Where the milkmaid throws a stone
At noon, to cross the rapid, flooded rill.

Here the cowslip, chill with cold,
On the rushy bed behold,
It looks for sunshine all the day.
Here the honey bee will come,...

John Clare