The Thursday Poem

Potted Flowers with Books IV
Eric Barjot

To Daffodils

Fair daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon:

As yet the early-rising sun

Has not attained his noon

Stay, stay,

Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the evensong;

And, having prayed 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 anything.

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.

Robert Herrick

(24th August 1591 - 15th October 1674)