English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 371. A Lesson |
| | | William Wordsworth (1770–1850) |
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| THERE is a flower, the Lesser Celandine, | |
| That shrinks like many more from cold and rain, | |
| And the first moment that the sun may shine, | |
| Bright as the sun himself, ’tis out again! | |
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| When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm, | 5 |
| Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest, | |
| Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm | |
| In close self-shelter, like a thing at rest. | |
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| But lately, one rough day, this flower I past, | |
| And recognized it, though an alter’d form, | 10 |
| Now standing forth an offering to the blast, | |
| And buffeted at will by rain and storm. | |
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| I stopp’d and said, with inly-mutter’d voice, | |
| ‘It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold; | |
| This neither is its courage nor its choice, | 15 |
| But its necessity in being old. | |
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| ‘The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew; | |
| It cannot help itself in its decay; | |
| Stiff in its members, wither’d, changed of hue,’— | |
| And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was gray. | 20 |
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| To be a prodigal’s favourite—then, worse truth, | |
| A miser’s pensioner—behold our lot! | |
| O Man! that from thy fair and shining youth | |
| Age might but take the things Youth needed not! | |
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