TO THE GARDEN DAISY; Daisy Chains — Photography in Mind

With apologies to:

Robert Burns (25thJanuary 1759 - 21stJuly 1796) “To a Mountain Daisy - On Turning One Down With The Plough in April 1786”

William Wordsworth (7thApril 1770 - 23rdMarch 1850) “To The Daisy” (4 poems) & “At The Grave of Burns - Seven Years After His Death”

Daisies always remind me of my childhood in London suburbia where they were common in gardens and on waste ground. I added them to my wildflower collection and as wee girls, we would play at making daisy chains, linking the flower stalks together to display the yellow gems in their white settings and make them into bracelets and necklaces.

My father called the daisies “weeds” but he made little attempt to remove them from the “lawn” nor from the spaces between the crazy paving where they flowered in profusion from early Spring well into Autumn. And so they do now, in our own Scottish garden where they flower freely in the grass, on the drive and around the wooden seat. It is said that a ‘weed’ is a wildflower growing in the wrong place but how can the place be wrong?

Robert Burns in his poem reflected on his mountain daisy being in the wrong place as he crushed its flowers beneath the plough on the ill-fated Mossgiel farm and compared the loss to his own:

‘Ev’n thou who mourn’st the Daisy’s fate, / That fate is thine - no distant date;’ (v.9)

William Wordsworth also associated the daisy with mourning but welcomed the idea of daisies on his own grave:

‘Sweet flower! belike one day to have / A place upon thy Poet’s grave,’ (poem 4 v.1)

During the Covid-19 ‘lockdown’ which started in March 2020 and included ‘no-mow May’ (good for the daisies and for the bees), there was time aplenty for many daisy-associated memories of family and friends, for thoughts of life and death and for poetry. My father would often quote favourite verses, many from the works of William Wordsworth and Robert Burns. Both poets wrote in praise of the humble daisy, its beauty, its resilience and of it being symbolic of life and hope.

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 pow’r

Thou bonie gem.

R.B. v.1 (*‘stoure’ - dust)

With little here to do or see

Of things that in the great world be.

Sweet daisy! oft I talk to thee,

For thou art worthy,

Thou unassuming Common-place

Of nature, with that homely face

And yet with something of a grace,

Which Love makes for thee!

W.W. Poem 2 v.1

Be violets in their secret mews

The flowers the wanton Zephyrs choose;

Proud be the rose, with rains and dews

Her head impearling;

Thou liv’st with less ambitious aim,

Yet hast not gone without thy fame;

Thou art indeed by many a claim

The Poet’s darling.

W.W. Poem 1 v.4

The flaunting flow’rs our  gardens yield,

High shelt’ring woods and  *wa’s maun shield;

But thou, beneath the  random *bield

O’ clod or stane,

Adorns the *histie stibble- field

Unseen, alane.

R.B. v.4 (*wa’s - walls; bield - shelter; histie stibble - bare stubble)

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!

R.B. v. 5

Fresh smitten by the  morning ray,

When thou art up, alert and gay,

Then, cheerful flower ! my spirits play

With kindred gladness:

And when, at dusk,  by dews opprest

Thou sink’st, the image of thy rest

Hath often eased my pensive breast

Of careful sadness.

W.W. Poem 1 v.8

Thee Winter in the garland wears,

That thinly decks his few grey hairs;

Spring parts the clouds with softest airs,

That she may sun thee;

Whole Summer- fields are thine  by right;

And Autumn, melancholy Wight !

Doth in thy crimson head delight

When rains are on thee.

W.W. Poem 1 v.2

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.

R.B. v.3

Robert Burns and William Wordsworth lived in very different circumstances, may have been “diversely inclined” and certainly never met. Yet they were contemporaries for a brief time and for both the natural world was an inspiration for many of their poems, both addressing verses to daisies in terms of endearment. Wordsworth freely acknowledged his debt to Burns as having inspired his own works.

And showed my youth / How Verse may build a princely throne / On humble truth. (v.6)

Neighbours we were, and loving friends / We might have been; (v.7)

True friends though diversely inclined;

But heart with heart and mind with mind,

Where the main fibres are entwined,

Through Nature’s skill,

May even by contraries be joined

More closely still. (v.8)

In the poem composed in sadness at the grave of Burns, Wordsworth speaks of Burns’s genius in words borrowed from the latter’s “Mountain Daisy”.

W.W. At The Grave of Burns; Seven Years after his death.