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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LOVE TO THE CHURCH by TIMOTHY DWIGHT ODES: BOOK 2: ODE 11. TO THE COUNTRY GENTLEMEN OF ENGLAND by MARK AKENSIDE THE SLAVE MARKET by GORDON BOTTOMLEY ADDRESS SPOKEN AT THE OPENING OF THE DRURY-LANE THEATRE by GEORGE GORDON BYRON SONG: GOOD COUNSEL TO A YOUNG MAID by THOMAS CAREW GOD BE WITH YOU by ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH ON HER ENDEAVOURING TO CONCEAL HER GRIEF AT PARTING by WILLIAM COWPER |