Hello there! It’s The Poetry Society’s National Poetry Day today, so naturally here at Clare Florist we thought we’d celebrate the day with you by sharing a few of the best-loved flower-based poems. Do you have any other favourites? Let us know about them in a comment!
Twickenham Garden, John Donne:
BLASTED with sighs, and surrounded with tears,
Hither I come to seek the spring,
And at mine eyes, and at mine ears,
Receive such balms as else cure every thing.
But O ! self-traitor, I do bring
The spider Love, which transubstantiates all,
And can convert manna to gall ;
And that this place may thoroughly be thought
True paradise, I have the serpent brought.
'Twere wholesomer for me that winter did
Benight the glory of this place,
And that a grave frost did forbid
These trees to laugh and mock me to my face ;
But that I may not this disgrace
Endure, nor yet leave loving, Love, let me
Some senseless piece of this place be ;
Make me a mandrake, so I may grow here,
Or a stone fountain weeping out my year.
Hither with crystal phials, lovers, come,
And take my tears, which are love's wine,
And try your mistress' tears at home,
For all are false, that taste not just like mine.
Alas ! hearts do not in eyes shine,
Nor can you more judge women's thoughts by tears,
Than by her shadow what she wears.
O perverse sex, where none is true but she,
Who's therefore true, because her truth kills me.
In a Station of the Metro, Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Haiku, Basho
The temple bell stops.
But the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.
Flowers by the Sea – William Carlos Williams
When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s
edge, unseen, the salt ocean
lifts its form—chicory and daisies
tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone
but color and the movement—or the shape
perhaps—of relentlessness, whereas
the sea is circled and sways
peacefully upon its plantlike stem
