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To a Daisy

1847 –

1922

Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide,
Like all created things, secrets from me,
And stand a barrier to eternity.
And I, how can I praise thee well and wide

From where I dwell—upon the hither side?
Thou little veil for so great mystery,
When shall I penetrate all things and thee,
And then look back? For this I must abide,

Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled
Literally between me and the world.
Then shall I drink from in beneath a spring,

And from a poet’s side shall read his book.
O daisy mine, what will it be to look
From God’s side even of such a simple thing?

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on March 25, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

Alice Christiana Gertrude Meynell was born on October 11, 1847, in Barnes, west London, to Thomas Thompson, a lover of literature and friend of Charles Dickens, and Christiana Weller, a noted painter and concert pianist. Thompson insisted on a classical education for his children, who were homeschooled. This education, as well as the verses of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti, inspired Meynell to try writing poetry as a teen.

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About this Poem

“To a Daisy” appeared in Alice Meynell’s first collection, Preludes (Henry S. King & Co., 1875). In “‘The Tides of the Mind’: Alice Meynell’s Poetry of Perception,” Maria Frawley, chair of the department of English at George Washington University, writes that “the speaker of ‘To a Daisy,’ an early sonnet, sees in the flower a kind of secrecy akin to the solitude so often represented in poems about individuals, but the poem progresses to foreground the perspective of the poet, who stands, according to the poem, ‘upon the hither side.’ [. . .] Asking first ‘when shall I . . . then look back,’ and later ‘what will it be to look,’ the poem juxtaposes the relativity of the poet’s temporal perspective to the spatial (through its references to the daisy standing ‘between me and the world’ and the promise that the poet will ‘drink from in beneath a spring’). Ultimately the temporal and spatial are united through reference to the ‘hither side,’ the ‘poet’s side,’ and ‘God’s side,’ which cumulatively enable Maynell to underscore variations of perspective within the poem more generally.”

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More by this poet

The Roaring Frost

A flock of winds came winging from the North,
Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forth
      With a resounding call:—

Where will they close their wings and cease their cries—
Between what warming seas and conquering skies—
      And fold, and fall?

Alice Meynell

1902

Renouncement

I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the thought that lurks in all delight—
   The thought of thee—and in the blue heaven’s height,
And in the sweetest passage of a song.
Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng
   This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright;
But it must never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
   When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,

Alice Meynell

1895

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To a Daisy

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