Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Daisy (Bellis)
And a breastplate made of daisies,
Closely fitting, leaf on leaf,
Periwinkles interlaced
Drawn for belt about the waist;
While the brown bees, humming praises,
Shot their arrows round the chief.
E. B. Browning—Hector in the Garden.
The daisy’s for simplicity and unaffected air.
Burns—O Luve Will Venture In.
Even thou who mournst the daisy’s fate,
That fate is thine—no distant date;
Stern Ruin’s ploughshare drives, elate,
Full on thy bloom,
Till crushed beneath the furrow’s weight
Shall be thy doom!
Burns—To a Mountain Daisy.
Over the shoulders and slopes of the dune
I saw the white daisies go down to the sea,
A host in the sunshine, an army in June,
The people God sends us to set our heart free.
Bliss Carman—Daisies.
You may wear your virtues as a crown,
As you walk through life serenely,
And grace your simple rustic gown
With a beauty more than queenly.
Though only one for you shall care,
One only speak your praises;
And you never wear in your shining hair,
A richer flower than daisies.
Phebe Cary—The Fortune in the Daisy.
Yun daiseyd mantels ys the mountayne dyghte.
Chatterton—Rowley Poems. Ælla.
That of all the floures in the mede,
Thanne love I most these floures white and rede,
Suche as men callen daysyes in her toune.
Chaucer—Canterbury Tales. The Legend of Good Women. L. 41.
That men by reason will it calle may
The daisie or elles the eye of day
The emperice, and floure of floures alle.
Chaucer—Canterbury Tales. The Legend of Good Women. L. 184.
Daisies infinite
Uplift in praise their little glowing hands,
O’er every hill that under heaven expands.
Ebenezer Elliott—Miscellaneous Poems. Spring. L. 13.
And daisy-stars, whose firmament is green.
Hood—Plea of the Midsummer Fairies. 36.
Stoop where thou wilt, thy careless hand
Some random bud will meet;
Thou canst not tread, but thou wilt find
The daisy at thy feet.
Hood—Song.
All summer she scattered the daisy leaves;
They only mocked her as they fell.
She said: “The daisy but deceives;
‘He loves me not,’ ‘he loves me well,’
One story no two daisies tell.”
Ah foolish heart, which waits and grieves
Under the daisy’s mocking spell.
Helen Hunt Jackson—The Sign of the Daisy.
Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he call’d the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars that on earth’s firmament do shine.
Longfellow—Flowers.
Not worlds on worlds, in phalanx deep,
Need we to prove a God is here;
The daisy, fresh from nature’s sleep,
Tells of His hand in lines as clear.
Dr. John Mason Good. Found in the Naturalist’s Poetical Companion by Rev. Edward Wilson.
Stars are the daisies that begem
The blue fields of the sky.
D. M. Moir—Dublin University Magazine, Oct., 1852.
There is a flower, a little flower
With silver crest and golden eye,
That welcomes every changing hour,
And weathers every sky.
Montgomery—A Field Flower.
The Rose has but a Summer reign,
The daisy never dies.
Montgomery—The Daisy. On Finding One in Bloom on Christmas Day.
Bright flowers, whose home is everywhere
Bold in maternal nature’s care
And all the long year through the heir
Of joy and sorrow,
Methinks that there abides in thee
Some concord with humanity,
Given to no other flower I see
The forest through.
Wordsworth—To the Daisy.
The poet’s darling.
Wordsworth—To the Daisy.
We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,
When such are wanted.
Wordsworth—To the Daisy.
Thou unassuming Commonplace
Of Nature.
Wordsworth—To the Same Flower.