The Flowers -- Rudyard Kipling

Guest poem sent in by Mallika Chellappa

(Poem #1332) The Flowers To our private taste, there is always something a little exotic, almost artificial, in songs which, under an English aspect and dress, are yet so manifestly the product of other skies. They affect us like translations; the very fauna and flora are alien, remote; the dog's-tooth violet is but an ill substitute for the rathe primrose, nor can we ever believe that the wood-robin sings as sweetly in April as the English thrush. — THE ATHENÆUM. Buy my English posies! Kent and Surrey may — Violets of the Undercliff Wet with Channel spray; Cowslips from a Devon combe — Midland furze afire — Buy my English posies And I'll sell your heart's desire! Buy my English posies! You that scorn the May, Won't you greet a friend from home Half the world away? Green against the draggled drift, Faint and frail and first — Buy my Northern blood-root And I'll know where you were nursed: Robin down the logging-road whistles, "Come to me!" Spring has found the maple-grove, the sap is running free; All the winds of Canada call the ploughing-rain. Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again! Buy my English posies! Here's to match your need — Buy a tuft of royal heath, Buy a bunch of weed White as sand of Muysenberg Spun before the gale — Buy my heath and lilies And I'll tell you whence you hail! Under hot Constantia broad the vineyards lie — Throned and thorned the aching berg props the speckless sky — Slow below the Wynberg firs trails the tilted wain — Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again! Buy my English posies! You that will not turn — Buy my hot-wood clematis, Buy a frond o' fern Gathered where the Erskine leaps Down the road to Lorne — Buy my Christmas creeper And I'll say where you were born! West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin — They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn — Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main — Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again! Buy my English posies! Here's your choice unsold! Buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom, Buy the kowhai's gold Flung for gift on Taupo's face, Sign that spring is come — Buy my clinging myrtle And I'll give you back your home! Broom behind the windy town; pollen o' the pine — Bell-bird in the leafy deep where the ratas twine — Fern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plain — Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again! Buy my English posies! Ye that have your own Buy them for a brother's sake Overseas, alone. Weed ye trample underfoot Floods his heart abrim — Bird ye never heeded, Oh, she calls his dead to him! Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas; Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these! Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land — Masters of the Seven Seas, oh, love and understand. -- Rudyard Kipling

           (1895)

Although manifestly a song (not a poem) for English patriots
there is something in this for everyone. (as the last
stanza underlines)

I can never read this without smelling the scents of parijath,
jasmine, champak, kewda (Thazhampu), sandal and the myriad
other scents of India, the mynah and the sparrow

This too is a gem from the "Anthology of Modern verse" again
committed to memory in early childhood, and recalled now
thanks to this forum.

Mallika