Two poems featuring spring – and daffodils. The first is a joyful love-song by Henry Constable (1562-1613); the second, by Robert Herrick (1591-1674), has a message about the transience of things.

 

                DIAPHENIA

 

Diaphenia like the daffadowndilly,

White as the sun, fair as the lily,

Heigh ho, how I do love thee!

I do love thee as my lambs

Are beloved of their dams;

How blest were I if thou woulds’t prove me.

 

Diaphenia like the spreading roses,

That in thy sweets all sweets encloses,

Fair sweet, how I do love thee!

I do love thee as each flower

Loves the sun’s life-giving power;

For dead, thy breath to life might move me.

 

 

                TO DAFFODILS

 

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon:

As yet the early-rising Sun

Has not attain’d his noon.

Stay, stay,

Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the even-song;

And, having pray’d together, we

Will go with you along.

 

We have short time to stay, as you,

We have as short a Spring;

As quick a growth to meet decay

As you, or any thing.

We die,

As your hours do, and dry

Away

Like to the Summer’s rain;

Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,

Ne’er to be found again.