ON RECEIVING A BUNCH OF FLOWERS

• I found on my return your gift of flowers:
• surprisingly, delightfully you chose
• not the delicious sweetness of the rose,
• which dies too soon and in its dying sours
• and drops so dully down, nor yet the brief
• exotic freesia forced in humid heat,
• nor stiff carnation, whose pungent spices beat
• one’s breath away, whose stems are bare of leaf,
• but a blaze of chrysanthemums — not overbred
• pampered creatures, burdened with swelling head
• but simple spray, yellow, bronze and gold;
• for two rich weeks their daisy buds unfold,
• each flower and stem and leaf breathing in
• my room an earthy tang of sun-warmed skin.

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