If to a rock from rains he fly, Or, some bright day of April sky, Imprisoned by hot sunshine, lie Near the green holly, And wearily at length should fare; He needs but look about, and there Thou art: a friend at hand, to scare His melancholy. A hundred times, by rock or bower, Ere thus I have lain couched an hour, Have I derived from thy sweet power Some apprehension; Some steady love, some brief delight; Some memory that had taken flight; Some chime of fancy wrong or right, Or stray invention. If stately passions in me burn, And one chance look to thee should turn, I drink out of an humbler urn A lowlier pleasure; The homely sympathy that heeds The common life our nature breeds; A wisdom fitted to the needs Of hearts at leisure. Sweet flower! for by that name at last, When all my reveries are past, I call thee, and to that cleave fast, Sweet, silent creature! That breath'st with me in sun and air, Do thou, as thou wert wont, repair My heart with gladness and a share Of thy meek nature! With still deeper poetic feeling has that untutored bard of nature, poor Burns, written of this little flower: TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY, _On turning one down with the plough, in April, 1786._ Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r, Thou's met me in an evil hour; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem; To spare thee now is past my power, Thou bonnie gem! Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet, The bonnie Lark, companion meet, Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet, Wi' speckl'd breast, When upward springing, blithe, to greet The purpling east. Cauld blew the bitter biting north Upon thy early, humble birth; Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm Scarce reared above the parent earth Thy tender form. The flaunting flowers our gardens yield, High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield But thou, beneath the random bield O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble field, Unseen, alane! There, in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snawie bosom sun-ward spread, Thou lifts thy unassuming head, In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies! Such is the fate of artless Maid, Sweet floweret of the rural shade! By love's simplicity betrayed, And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid Low i' the dust. Such is the fate of simple Bard, On life's rough ocean; luckless starr'd, Unskilful he to note the card Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, And whelm him o'er!