The best flower poems selected past Dr Oliver Tearle

Flowers are a perennial theme of poetry. Indeed, the give-and-take for a volume of poems, 'anthology', even comes from the Greek for 'flower'. Given how many archetype poems have been written nearly flowers, it's difficult to narrow it down to just 10 of the best flowery poems – but that is still what we've tried to do below, offering a range of poems (comic, celebratory, romantic, carpe diem) from different periods of English literature.

1. George Herbert, 'A Wreath'.

A wreathèd garland of deservèd praise,
Of praise deservèd, unto Thee I give,
I give to Thee, who knowest all my ways,
My kleptomaniacal winding ways, wherein I alive,—
Wherein I die, not live ; for life is straight,
Straight equally a line, and e'er tends to Thee,
To Thee, who fine art more than far above deceit,
Than deceit seems above simplicity…

In this poem by one of English literature's greatest devotional poets, Herbert creatively suggests the shape of a wreath through the rhyme scheme of his verse form.

George Herbert (1593-1633) was 1 of the greatest poets of the seventeenth century and one of a group that Samuel Johnson identified equally the 'Metaphysical poets'. Yet his poems almost died with him in 1633, and it was only thanks to his friend's sound judgment that they saw the low-cal of day. In this postal service we sketch out a very brief biography of George Herbert: i of the greatest religious poets of whatsoever historic period.

The progression of the lines in this poem, and its rhyme scheme, both reflect the wreath's circularity, a symbol of totality and connection. So the movement from ane line to next forms a chain: the first line ends with talk of 'deservèd praise', so the 2d line begins past talking about 'praise deservèd'; this second line in plough ends 'unto Thee I give', leading into the third line which begins 'I give to Thee'; and and so on, until we terminate up where we started, with 'a crown of praise' returning u.s.a. to the first line of the poem, 'A wreathèd garland of deservèd praise'. A practiced poem, all round, nosotros might say. Follow the link above to read the full poem and learn more than about it.

ii. William Wordsworth, 'I wandered lonely as a cloud'.

Continuous as the stars that polish
And twinkle on the galaxy,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves abreast them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not merely be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed – and gazed – but piffling thought
What wealth the bear witness to me had brought…

Often known only as 'The Daffodils' or 'Wordsworth's daffodils verse form', this is also one of the most famous poems of English Romanticism, and sees Wordsworth (1770-1850) celebrating the 'host of gilt daffodils' he saw while out walking. The poem was actually a collaboration between Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy (whose notes helped to inspire it), and Wordsworth's wife, Mary. Follow the link to a higher place to read the full poem and larn more about information technology.

3. Percy Shelley, 'The Flower That Smiles To-Mean solar day'.

The blossom that smiles to-day
To-morrow dies;
All that we wish to stay
Tempts and and so flies.
What is this world's delight?
Lightning that mocks the night,
Brief even as brilliant.

This is a poem about the brevity of all things – all hopes, desires, and delights the world has to offer are short-lived and doomed to die. Everything is fleeting and transitory. This argument had been fabricated before Shelley made it: consider Robert Herrick's famous seventeenth-century verse form 'To the Virgins, to Brand Much of Time'.

Indeed, Shelley'southward opening lines seem to be a conscious reworking of Herrick's: where Shelley writes 'The blossom that smiles today / Tomorrow dies', Herrick had written that 'this same flower that smiles today / Tomorrow will be dying.' Encounter the link above to read the total verse form and learn more than almost it.

4. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 'The Blossom'.

In one case in a gilt hour
I bandage to earth a seed.
Upwards at that place came a flower,
The people said, a weed…

A rather Blakean poem, this: a sort of parable in quatrains. Tennyson'due south speaker tells how he planted a flower, merely other people cursed him and his flower, dismissing it equally a weed. However, when the blossom grows tall, thieves make off with information technology. See the link above to read the poem in full.

To paraphrase the meaning of Tennyson's verse form, he's attacking those critics who scorn his work – likening it to useless and unwanted 'weeds' rather than beautiful flowers – considering he feels that such critics have forgotten that he was the one who showed so many others how to write poetry.

And yet, does the poem have to be justvirtuallyverse itself? Tennyson is using the metaphor of the flower to suggest other forms of creativity: somebody creates something, others criticise it, and nonetheless those same people notwithstanding learn from what that artist created and re-create it, often producing inferior results.

5. A. E. Housman, 'The Lent Lily'.

And at that place's the windflower chilly
With all the winds at play,
And there's the Lenten lily
That has not long to stay
And dies on Easter day.

And since till girls go maying
Y'all find the primrose still,
And find the windflower playing
With every wind at volition,
But not the daffodil…

Another daffodils poem, 'The Lent Lily' is from Housman's pop 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad, which focuses on the daffodil or 'Lent lily', so named because it 'dies on Easter day'. Housman's poem is shot through with regret and nostalgia, and this verse form neatly encapsulates his trademark style and tone. Follow the link higher up to read the poem in full.

6. Edward Thomas, 'Tall Nettles'.

This corner of the farmyard I similar most:
As well as whatsoever flower upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost
Except to show the sweetness of a shower.

Nettles get a bad press from poets, and aren't equally plain 'poetic' equally, say, roses or daffodils. However in this curt poem, Edward Thomas (1878-1917) addresses the hidden dazzler and poetry to exist found in the tall nettles growing by the tool-shed. Encounter the link above to read the full poem and learn more nigh it.

7. Robert Frost, 'Bloom-Gathering'.

Robert Frost (1874-1963) is regarded every bit one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century. And yet he didn't belong to any particular movement: different his contemporaries William Carlos Williams or Wallace Stevens he was not a modernist, preferring more than traditional modes and utilising a more straight and less obscure poetic language. He famously observed of free verse, which was favoured by many modernist poets, that information technology was 'like playing lawn tennis with the cyberspace downward'.

Many of his poems are near the natural world, with woods and trees featuring prominently in some of his virtually famous and widely anthologised poems ('The Road Not Taken', 'Stopping past Woods on a Snowy Evening', 'Birches', 'Tree at My Window'). Elsewhere, he was fond of very curt and pithy poetic statements: see 'Burn and Ice' and 'But Outer Space', for example.

In this short poem, Frost – a friend and encourager of Edward Thomas – addresses his wife, who was pregnant with their get-go child at the time, musing upon the times when he had to leave her at home while he went and gathered flowers for her.

viii. William Carlos Williams, 'Asphodel, That Greeny Blossom'.

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was a prolific American poet whose poems range from the short imagist lyrics which are among his best-known works to longer, more ambitious projects.

Equally Ann Fisher-Wirth has remarked, this long 1955 verse form is a fine affirmation of 'the ability of dear in – and confronting – the nuclear age'. A meditative poem, J. Hillis Miller has called it the 'extraordinary love poem of Williams' old historic period'.

9. Sylvia Plath, 'Tulips'.

The life – and death – of Sylvia Plath (1932-63) tin sometimes announced to eclipse her poetic achievement, as well every bit her achievement in fiction (she wrote 1 novel,The Bong Jar, as well as a collection of brusk stories). But this is partly because so much of her work drew on her life for its subject area-matter, particularly her unflinching analysis of her own struggles with her mental health.

This poem was written in March 1961, plain after Plath was admitted to hospital for an appendectomy. The view of the earth Plath describes in 'Tulips' is based effectually ideas of blankness and emptiness: Plath has, she tells us, given up her dress to the nurses, her history to the anaesthetist, and her body to the surgeons. Running through the poem is the image of the tulips.

10. Wendy Cope, 'Flowers'.

This concluding poem on this list of the best flower poems is equally much a love poem as information technology is a flower verse form, and is as much a comic poem as it is a dear verse form. The contemporary comic poet Wendy Cope (b. 1945) is very good at sending up the beloved poem – and perhaps nowhere better than hither, where Cope congratulates her lover for … nearly ownership her some flowers. If we are supposed to say it with flowers, what did Cope'southward lover manage to say here? The thought was there …

And however the clever affair almost this poem is that it remains ambiguous: are nosotros being invited to take the female speaker's words at face value? In other words, is the fact thatthe idea was at that placeenough, or is she mocking her other half for his failed attempts at romance and his pathetic excuses for why he never treats her to anything? The final paradigm in the verse form, of those flowers he nearby bought (merely didn't) lasting all this while, tin arguably be read as both touchingly forgiving and bitingly judgmental.

For more archetype poetry, we recommend The Oxford Volume of English Verse  – perhaps the all-time poetry anthology on the market. Continue to explore our poesy selections with these archetype poems nearly fruit, these slap-up bird poems, and these poems near roads.

The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough Academy. He is the author of, among others, The Surreptitious Library: A Volume-Lovers' Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.

Image (bottom): Pinkish tulips at Keukenhof, Holland (moving picture credit: Kham Tran, 2009), via Wikimedia Eatables.