The Small Celandine [A]

Composed 1804.--Published 1807

[Grasmere, Town-end. It is remarkable that this flower coming out so early in the spring as it does, and so bright and beautiful, and in such profusion, should not have been noticed earlier in English verse. What adds much to the interest that attends it, is its habit of shutting itself up and opening out according to the degree of light and temperature of the air.--I. F.]

In pencil on opposite page "Has not Chaucer noticed it?"--W. W.

This was classed by Wordsworth among his "Poems referring to the Period of Old Age."-Ed.

There is a Flower, the lesser Celandine, That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain; And, the first moment that the sun may shine, Bright as the sun himself, 'tis out again!

When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm, Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest, Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm, In close self-shelter, like a Thing at rest.

But lately, one rough day, this Flower I passed And recognised it, though an altered form, Now standing forth an offering to the blast, And buffeted at will by rain and storm.

I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice, "It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold: This neither is its courage nor its choice, But its necessity in being old.

"The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew; It cannot help itself in its decay; Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue." And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was grey.

To be a Prodigal's Favourite--then, worse truth, A Miser's Pensioner--behold our lot! O Man, that from thy fair and shining youth Age might but take the things Youth needed not!

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