The daisies in the meadows, not in vain,
In red and white and gold before our eyes,
Have written an idyll for man’s sympathies,
And set his heart’s desire in language plain.
Gold stamens set in silver filigrane
Reveal the treasures which we idolize;
And all the cost of struggle for the prize
Is symboled by a secret blood-red stain.
Was it because your petals once uncurled
When Jesus rose upon a fairer world,
And from wings shaken for a heav’nward flight
Shed grace, that still as autumn reappears
You bloom again to tell of dead delight,
To bring us back the flower of twenty years?
Lucien felt piqued by Lousteau’s complete indifference during the
reading of the sonnet; he was unfamiliar as yet with the disconcerting
impassibility of the professional critic, wearied by much reading of
poetry, prose, and plays. Lucien was accustomed to applause. He choked
down his disappointment and read another, a favorite with Mme. de
Bargeton and with some of his friends in the Rue des Quatre-Vents.
“This one, perhaps, will draw a word from him,” he thought.