下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way.
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, overjoyed that they
An El Dorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth’s ample round
May match in wealth — thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.
Gold such as thine ne’er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,
Nor wrinkled the lean brow
Of age, to rob the lover’s heart of ease;
’Tis the spring’s largess, which she scatters now
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,
Though most hearts never understand
To take it at God’s value, but pass by
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye.
Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes thou givest me
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time;
Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment
In the white lily’s breezy tent,
His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.
Then think I of deep shadows on the grass —
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the breezes pass,
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways —
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,
Or whiten in the wind — of waters blue
That from the distance sparkle through
Some woodland gap — and of a sky above,
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.
My childhood’s earliest thoughts are linked with thee;
The sight of thee calls back the robin’s song,
Who, from the dark old tree
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long.
And I, secure in childish piety,
Listened as if I heard an angel sing
With news from heaven, which he could bring
Fresh every day to my untainted ears,
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.
How like a prodigal doth Nature seem,
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!
Thou teachest me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart,
Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show
Did we but pay the love we owe,
And with a child’s undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God’s book.
( James Russell Lowell )
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) came of an old and influential New England family. He grew up in an atmosphere of learning, in the old family home in historic Cambridge, at the very doors of Harvard College, enjoying every advantage for culture that inherited tastes, ample means, and convenient opportunity could offer. Not only did he have the college near by, but his father’s library, in which he roamed at will from his very infancy, was one of the richest in the whole country. It is not strange, then, that he grew to be one of the most scholarly Americans of his time.
Lowell’s first poems were on political subjects and had a great influence in the stirring times which preceded the Mexican War. His “Commemoration Ode,” written some years later, is one of our great patriotic poems. In 1848 he published “The Vision of Sir Launfal,” a beautiful tale of knightly aspiration and brotherly love.
Lowell succeeded Longfellow as Professor of Romance Languages at Hansard.Besides his poems he wrote several volumes of essays, and he was the first editor of the Atlantic Monthly, He served as Minister to Spain and later as Minister to England.
largess : gift
lavish : generous
peer : companion, equal
prodigal : spendthrift
Answer the following questions.
1) How does the poet express love for the dandelion?
2) How do we know the dandelion is so dear to the poet?
3) How do we know the poet must have lived in the country?
4) Why does the dandelion remind the poet of the tropics and Italy?
5) What are some things that the dandelion is compared to?