Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MICHAELMAS DAISIES, by NORMAN ROWLAND GALE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MICHAELMAS DAISIES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Tis more than mid-october, yet along the
Last Line: Gives angels for the blossoms that old time has borne away.
Subject(s): Daisies; Flowers; Summer


'TIS more than mid-October, yet along the narrow garden
The daisies loved of Michaelmas keep sturdily in flower;
For, though the evenings sharply fall, they find a way to harden
The crop of comely blossoming that makes for me a bower.

The honey-hunters, diligent, are searching them for sweetness;
A pair of handsome bluetits flash their colours on a stem
(Exponents of the art of standing upside-down with neatness)
While two entranced Red Admirals gaze stonily at them.

The rose has faded bedward, there to dream of scarlet duty
When June is kissing England at the flower-tide of the year;
The gladiolus in his bulb considers plans for beauty
To flame along the border when his miracle is clear.

Yet autumn wears an apron, and the apron's sweet with lendings
Of colours matched with comeliness of blossom and of leaf;
And daisies dear to Michaelmas, with dances and with bendings,
Forbid my heart to weary for the Summer's beauteous sheaf.

The garden's fate not narrowly resembles my condition,
With Spring and Summer gone afield delighting other places;
Where towered the hollyhock of Hope, the larkspur of Ambition,
Unvaunting blossoms, pale but sweet, have learned to show their faces.

Though Time has thinned my lavender and plucked my reddest roses,
(He's welcome to the buttonhole he gathered in my ground!)
His picking of a loveliness fresh loveliness uncloses—
Some overshadowed pansy that my heart had never found.

What though he made a nosegay of the fairest and the tallest?
My loving fingers still can tend some simples in the dusk.
'Tis easy to be patient. I will think the best is smallest,
And water here good-humouredly my little pot of musk.

Old Time has made a nosegay. He is welcome to his plucking
Of tiger-lilies, lad's-love, and the tall cathedral spires
Of lupins, and snapdragons where the bee is fond of sucking,
And all the flowery likenesses of Youth and Youth's desires.

Old Time has got my nosegay; but the gloaming finds me cheery,
Because the gloaming is itself a flower of lovely hue!
The more I look at what remains, the less the world seems dreary,
For quiet breathes at Michaelmas, and well-worn friends are true.

Ah, quiet breathes at Michaelmas, and Love, his bosom sober,
Has got the perfect song by heart and hums it all the day,
To thrill me without feverings and teach how mid-October
Gives angels for the blossoms that old Time has borne away.





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