Getting ready for Burns Night

Burns Night is on 25th January . My poem for the day is by Robert Burns (1759 - 1796) and I chose it because it sounds wintry and I like the first line. He is talking about a mountain Daisy, and today in the bright January sunshine there were signs of new buds, ruby red berries and one or two daisies.

To a Mountain Daisy

Wee, modest, crimson tippet flower,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush among the stoure
Thy slender stem
To spare thee now is past my pow'r
Thou bonnie gem.

Alas! it's no my neebor sweet,
the bonnie lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'mong the dewy weet:
Wi' speckled breast,
When upward springing, Blythe, to greet
the purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitterbiting North,
Upon thy, early, humble, Birth
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm
Searce rear'd above the parent earth
Thy tender form.

The flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield
High sheltering Woods and wa's maun shields
But thou beneath the random bield
O'clod or stane
Adorns the bistie stibble-field
Unseen, alone

There, in thy scanty mantle clad
Thy snowy bosom sunward spread
Thy lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise
But now the share uptears thy bed
And low thy lies.

Robert Burns