Poetry of Robert Burns

To a Mountain Daisy

WEE modest crimson-tipped flow’r,
Thou’s met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem:
To spare thee now is past my pow’r,
Thou bonnie gem.

Alas ! it’s no thy neibor sweet,
The bonnie lark, companion meet,
Bending thee ‘mang the dewy weet
Wi’ spreckl’d breast,
When upward springing, blythe to greet
The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy early humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm,
Scarce rear’d above the parent-earth
Thy tender form.

The flaunting flow’rs our gardens yield
High shelt’ring woods and wa’s maun shield,
But thou, beneath the random bield
O’ clod or stane,
Adorns the histie stibble-field,
Unseen, alane.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawy bosom sun-ward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise;
But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!

Such is the fate of artless maid,
Sweet flow’ret of the rural shade,
By love’s simplicity betrayd,
And guileless trust,
Till she like thee, all soil’d, is laid
Low i’ the dust.