A Daffodil

Pure--throated Flower,

Smelling of Spring,

Shaped beyond art's

Imagining;

Fathomless colour,

Breathed as an ether

Of flame and of stillness

Melted together;

Soul of the sun's beam

Changed to fairy

Flesh, so delicate,

Poised and airy!

I think of my own kind,

Hardly winning

A thousand battles

For joy's beginning;

Victory bloody

And with evil shared,

Splendour soiled

And greatness snared;

Truth conceded

Or won by halves,

Pitiful sores

And sorrier salves;

Blind authority

Treading like oxen's heels

All that sees clearest,

All that most feels.

But you are absolute

(Follow who can!)

As a commandment

Of God to man.

Straight you spring

And whole you spend,

And fall upon fruitful earth,

Clean to the end.

O to be pure

As a single sense,

Keen as scorn,

As love intense,

To live in the light,

And to die in a deed

That is faith's Amen

And has sown its seed!