Welcome back to Flower Poetry Fridays with Mrs. Sigourney. Each Friday a new poem will be posted from her The Voice Of Flowers.
THE TRAVELLED FLOWER. Daisy After the Rain
A DAISY, which once grew on the banks of
the Thames, in England, had been transplant-
ed and brought to this country. It bore the
voyage well, and flourished in the garden
where it was placed.
A Cowslip, its nearest neighbor, was very
kind, and if it ever looked sad, like a stranger,
cheered it, and spoke words of comfort. It
asked much of its adventures on the ocean,
and of its native land. So it told its friend the
Cowslip, whatever it desired to know.
It described the ship sailing quietly over the
great waters, and its pleasant intercourse with
a pansy that bore it company. " We stood
side by side on a shelf, in the room of the per-
son, with whom we emigrated.
"The Pansy was blessed with a large family
of fine children, and I had two promising in-
fants when I began the voyage. But they pin-
ed for the free air, and the fresh dews of the
valley where they were born.
" I was ever watching and nursing them.
One night, we were alarmed by great confu-
sion and noise, and a chill that struck us to the
heart. We heard a cry of "icebergs" and
peeping through the window of our state room,
saw monstrous masses of cold glittering ice
floating around us.
" Then I heard the Pansy whispering to her
little ones, not to be afraid to die. But I trem-
bled with terror. That very night my young-
est darling died. And had it not been for the
care of my other drooping babe, I think I should
have died too.
" The next day, they said we were out of dan-
ger, and the keen wintry cold passed away.
And though we arrived safely, and I am happy in
my new home, I never can bear to think of the
voyage where my poor little one perished."
The kind neighbor could not help shiver-
ing with sympathy at the tale of sorrow. " I
have heard people who walk in the garden, call
you the Daisy of Runnimede. What can they
mean by such a hard name ?" asked the Cow-
slip.
" It is a delightful green vale in England,
where, in old times, a king signed a paper,
which gave the people freedom. For that rea-
son it is visited as a sort of sacred place.
" My birth there, was all that gave me value
in the eyes of my owner, and procured me the
privilege of travelling to see distant lands."—
Many things the Daisy related, so that the
Cowslip, thus daily instructed, knew almost
as much of foreign countries as if it had been
there.
A Dandelion lived near, but did not incline
to listen to these adventures. Indeed, she
ridiculed the way in which her neighbors
spent so much of their time, and said for her
part, she had something else to do.
She thanked her stars she was not a blue,
—no ! not she ! nor a pedant neither. The
vanity of those travelled people was extremely
ridiculous, always talking about what they had
seen. She laughed loudly at the Cowslip, call-
ing her an antiquarian, and said she wondered
what good came from being such a deal wiser
than other people.
A Sage-plant, who had cast off his blossoms,
and gone to seed, heard her flippancy of speech
and reproved her. He said, " knowledge is
good ; it teaches men how to be useful to each
other, and keeps women from too much gad-
ding abroad.
" By knowledge, my own salubrious proper-
ties have been discovered, so that I am not
cut down like a common weed. Right
knowledge teaches both men and flowers not
to be slanderous, for it gives them higher and
better subjects of thought."
So the Dandelion was silent before the Sage
and ceased to laugh at those who were wiser
than herself. For she had already perceived
that they had some kind of secret happiness,
and took comfort when other flowers were out
of spirits, on stormy days, and when no butter-
flies visited them.
Knowledge is good!
The emigrant daisy shares her knowledge of the world with her neighbors, so in a way she was teaching them about new lands and places that they had never witnessed.
To gain the power of knowledge all one has to do is listen, said the wise old sage. The sage plant offered, “By knowledge, my own salubrious properties have been discovered, so that I am not cut down like a common weed.”
The properties of sage that promote well-being and a healthy mind and body are said to be many, including desirable anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial properties.
The silly dandelion scoffed at them who would share their stories thinking them loud and obnoxious show-offs. That is, until the sage put the yellow slanderous flower in her place. She simply didn’t know what she was talking about, yet complained just the same.
Knowledge gives us better and higher thoughts to think!
Come back next Friday for the next installment in our series of flower poems from Mrs. Sigourney’s The Voice of Flowers, “Spring Blossoms to the Mourner”.
