The DAISY or day's eye (_bellis perennis_) has been the darling of the
British poets from Chaucer to Shelley. It is not, however, the darling
of poets only, but of princes and peasants. And it is not man's favorite
only, but, as Wordsworth says, Nature's favorite also. Yet it is "the
simplest flower that blows." Its seed is broadcast on the land. It is
the most familiar of flowers. It sprinkles every field and lane in the
country with its little mimic stars. Wordsworth pays it a beautiful
compliment in saying that
Oft alone in nooks remote
_We meet it like a pleasant thought
When such is wanted._
But though this poet dearly loved the daisy, in some moods of mind he
seems to have loved the little celandine (common pilewort) even better.
He has addressed two poems to this humble little flower. One begins with
the following stanza.
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.
No flower is too lowly for the affections of Wordsworth. Hazlitt says,
"the daisy looks up to Wordsworth with sparkling eye as an old
acquaintance; a withered thorn is weighed down with a heap of
recollections; and even the lichens on the rocks have a life and being
in his thoughts."
The Lesser Celandine, is an inodorous plant, but as Wordsworth possessed
not the sense of smell, to him a deficiency of fragrance in a flower
formed no objection to it. Miss Martineau alludes to a newspaper report
that on one occasion the poet suddenly found himself capable of enjoying
the fragrance of a flower, and gave way to an emotion of tumultuous
rapture. But I have seen this contradicted. Miss Martineau herself has
generally no sense of smell, but we have her own testimony to the fact
that a brief enjoyment of the faculty once actually occurred to her. In
her case there was a simultaneous awakening of two dormant
faculties--the sense of smell and the sense of taste. Once and once only,
she enjoyed the scent of a bottle of Eau de Cologne and the taste of meat.
The two senses died away again almost in their birth.
Shelley calls Daisies "those pearled Arcturi of the earth"--"the
constellated flower that never sets."
The Father of English poets does high honor to this star of the meadow
in the "Prologue to the Legend of Goode Women."
He tells us that in the merry month of May he was wont to quit even his
beloved books to look upon the fresh morning daisy.
Of all the floures in the mede
Then love I most these floures white and red,
Such that men callen Daisies in our town,
To them I have so great affection.
As I sayd erst, when comen is the Maie,
That in my bedde there dawneth me no daie
That I nam up and walking in the mede
To see this floure agenst the Sunne sprede,
When it up riseth early by the morrow
That blisfull sight softeneth all my sorrow.
_Chaucer_.
The poet then goes on with his hearty laudation of this lilliputian
luminary of the fields, and hesitates not to describe it as "of all
floures the floure." The famous Scottish Peasant loved it just as truly,
and did it equal honor. Who that has once read, can ever forget his
harmonious and pathetic address to a mountain daisy on turning it up
with the plough? I must give the poem a place here, though it must be
familiar to every reader. But we can read it again and again, just as we
can look day after day with undiminished interest upon the flower that
it commemorates.
Mrs. Stowe (the American writer) observes that "the daisy with its wide
plaited ruff and yellow centre is not our (that is, an American's)
flower. The English flower is the