Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, OLD-FASHIONED VERMONT FLOWERS, by DANIEL LEAVENS CADY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OLD-FASHIONED VERMONT FLOWERS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I like vermont's old-fashioned flowers
Last Line: To bloom around our woodhouse door.
Subject(s): Farm Life; Flowers; Gardens & Gardening; Spring; Vermont; Agriculture; Farmers


I LIKE Vermont's old-fashioned flowers—
The dahlia's height and comeliness,
The morning glory's happy face,
The poppy in her summer dress;
But 'mongst the many kinds of flowers
I've loved in days that come no more,
I 'blieve I like the sturtions best
That grew around our woodhouse door.

When Spring would come I used to take
Them crimpy sturtion seeds and go
And plant 'em in the mellow earth,
And hope and hope and hope they'd grow;
They always grew—they never failed—
I often wished I'd planted more—
Oh! I can see them sturtions yet
A-blooming 'round the woodhouse door.

Each shoot, it had two jagged leaves
When first it peeped above the ground,
But like the eyes that watched 'em grow,
Them jagged leaves soon changed to round;
I used to tend 'em every day,
I called 'em mine—that dream is o'er—
Some kind of cosmos now, I s'pose,
Does business 'round the woodhouse door.

How scarlet and how red they blowed
Amongst the green that banked their beds!
Oh! you could almost see their souls
The way they held their pretty heads;
I'd not a-picked a single one
If there had been a thousand more—
They had their rights as well as me—
The sturtions 'round our woodhouse door.

The orchids of the South I've seen,
The lotus, formed of heavenly bisque,
The flame vine and the saffron rose,
The moon flower's elephantine disc;
But none or all of them replace
The humble flowers I've named before—
The sturtions that were kind enough
To bloom around our woodhouse door.





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