O dandelion, rich and haughty, King of village flowers! Each day is coronation time, You have no humble hours. I like to see you bring a troop To beat the blue-grass spears, To scorn the lawn-mower that would be Like fate's triumphant shears. Your yellow heads are cut away, It seems your reign is o'er. By noon you raise a sea of stars More golden than before. VACHEL LINDSAY JOE-PYEWEED And the name brings back those kindly hills And the drowsing life so new to me; And the welcome that those purple blossoms With their tiny trumpets blew to me. Stout and tall, they raised their clustered heads, Leaping, as a lusty fellow would, Through the lowlands, down the twisting cow-paths; Running past the green and yellow wood. How they come again--those rambling roads; And the weeds' wild jewels glowing there. Richer than a Paradise of flowers Was that bit of pasture growing there. Weeds--the very names call up those faint Half-forgotten smells and cries again ... Weeds--like some old charm, I say them over, And the rolling Berkshires rise again: _Basil, Boneset, Toadflax, Tansy, Weeds of every form and fancy; Milk-weed, Mullein, Loose-strife, Jewel-weed, Mustard, Thimble-weed, Tear-thumb (a cruel weed). Clovers in all sorts--Nonesuch, Melilot; Staring Buttercups, a bold and yellow lot. Daisies rioting about the place With Black-eyed Susan and Queen Anne's Lace...._ Names--they blossom into colored hills; Hills whose rousing beauty flows to me ... And with all its soundless, purple trumpets, Lo, the Joe-Pyeweed still blows to me! LOUIS UNTERMEYER TO A DAISY Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide Like all created things, secrets from me, And stand a barrier to eternity. And I, how can I praise thee well and wide From where I dwell--upon the hither side? Thou little veil for so great mystery, When shall I penetrate all things and thee, And then look back? For this I must abide, Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled Literally between me and the world. Then I shall drink from in beneath a spring, And from a poet's side shall read his book. O daisy mine, what will it be to look From God's side even of such a simple thing? ALICE MEYNELL A SOFT DAY A soft day, thank God! A wind from the south With a honeyed mouth; A scent of drenching leaves, Briar and beech and lime, White elder-flower and thyme And the soaking grass smells sweet, Crushed by my two bare feet, While the rain drips, Drips, drips, drips from the eaves.