The prouder beauties of the field In gay but quick succession shine, Race after race their honours yield, They flourish and decline.
But this small flower, to Nature dear, While moons and stars their courses run, Wreathes the whole circle of the year, Companion of the sun.
It smiles upon the lap of May, To sultry August spreads its charms, Lights pale October on his way, And twines December's arms.
The purple heath and golden broom, On moory mountains catch the gale, O'er lawns the lily sheds perfume, The violet in the vale.
But this bold floweret climbs the hill, Hides in the forest, haunts the glen, Plays on the margin of the rill, Peeps round the fox's den.
Within the garden's cultured round It shares the sweet carnation's bed; And blooms on consecrated ground In honour of the dead.
The lambkin crops its crimson gem, The wild-bee murmurs on its breast, The blue-fly bends its pensile stem, Light o'er the sky-lark's nest.
'Tis FLORA'S page,--in every place, In every season fresh and fair; It opens with perennial grace. And blossoms everywhere.
On waste and woodland, rock and plain, Its humble buds unheeded rise; The rose has but a summer-reign; The DAISY never dies.
Montgomery has another very pleasing poetical address to the daisy. The poem was suggested by the first plant of the kind which had appeared in India. The flower sprang up unexpectedly out of some English earth, sent with other seeds in it, to this country. The amiable Dr. Carey of Serampore was the lucky recipient of the living treasure, and the poem is supposed to be addressed by him to the dear little flower of his home, thus born under a foreign sky. Dr. Carey was a great lover of flowers, and it was one of his last directions on his death-bed, as I have already said, that his garden should be always protected from the intrusion of Goths and Vandals in the form of Bengallee goats and cows. I must give one stanza of Montgomery's second poetical tribute to the small flower with "the silver crest and golden eye."
Thrice-welcome, little English flower! To this resplendent hemisphere Where Flora's giant offsprings tower In gorgeous liveries all the year; Thou, only thou, art little here Like worth unfriended and unknown, Yet to my British heart more dear Than all the torrid zone.