Daisies are our silver

It's only the second day of February and officiaaly still Winter but everywhere there are signs that Spring is round the corner. Amongst the carpets of dry brown leaves fresh green stalks of snowdrops appear. They hang their heads as if to salute the retreating Winter and protect themselves from the last final flurries of snow.

There are always daisies to be seen. So many poets, from Chaucer to Wordsworth, Burns and Shelley,

seem to have  had a thing about daisies and it's easy to understand why.  They grow everywhere for everyone. They're happy to be picked and made into chains or clutched in tiny fingers.

Here is a selection of verses from poems about daisies by famous poets.

daisies are always there for us

 

There in thy scanty mantle clad

Thy snowy bosom sunward spread

Thou lifts thy unassuming head

In humble guise

But now the share uptears thy bed

And low thou lies

Robert Burns To a Daisy

Above all flouris in the mede

Than I love most those flouris

White and rede

Soehe that men call daisies

In our towne

Chaucer

Daisies, ye flowers of lowly birth

Embroiderers of the carpet earth

That gem the velvet sod

John Clare

Daisies those pearled Areturi of the earth

The constellated flowers that never set

Percy Shelley

Child of the year! That round dost run

Thou pleasant course when days begun

As ready to salute the sun

As lark or leveret.

Thou long lost praise thou shalt regain

Nor be less dear to future men

Than in old time - thou art not vain

Art Nature's favourite

William Wordsworth - To a daisy