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Spring Yellow: ‘Tis The Little Celandine

celandine

I think more poetry has been written about spring than any other season.

The Australian poet Clive Sansom wrote a poem entitled “Spring Yellow.” Of course, yellow is the color of many spring beauties such as forsythia, daffodils, celandine poppies and dandelions.

Here’s the poem:

A yellow sun climbs the sky,
Warming the earth with proof of spring.
Yellow the burdens children clutch
Elate from primrose gathering.
Wild daffodils proclaim their gold
Along the fringes of the town;
Wind stirs the jasmine-flowers, and shakes,
Their saffron-pointed petals down.
And where the elm- trees crowd so close
The sun has hardly space to shine---
See how their last-year leaves throw up
The enameled sun-bright celandine.

William Wordsworth, who is so famous for his poems about daffodils, has also celebrated the celandine poppy. He wrote:

Primroses will have their glory
And long as there are violets,
They will have their place in story:
There’s a flower that shall be mine
‘Tis the little celandine.

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