Auden W.H. 1907-1973
„As I Walked Out One Evening"
The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.
Herrick Robert 1591-1674
‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time'
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying.
Joyce James 1882-1941
Ulysses
He ... saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.
MacInnes Colm
At rare moments in history, by a series of accidents never to be repeated, arise flower societies in which the cult of happiness is paramount,
hedonistic, mindless, intent upon the glorious physical instant.
Malory Sir Thomas d.1471
Le Morte D'Arthur
For as well as I have loved thee heretofore, mine heart will not serve now to see thee; for through thee and me is the flower of things and knights destroyed.
Milton John 1608-1674
´On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough'
O fairest flower no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken primrose fading timelessly.
Mumford Lewis 1895-1990
Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
Nashe Thomas 1567-1601
Summer's Last Will and Testament
Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour;
Brightness falls from the air;
Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord have mercy on us.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Romeo and Juliet
Death lies on her like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.
Tennyson Alfred Lord 1809-1892
Idylls of the King - Dedication
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life,
Before a thousand peering littlenesses.
Watts Isaac 1674-1748
Divine Songs for Children ´Against
Idleness'
How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!
Wordsworth William 1770-1850
´Ode. Intimations of Immortality'
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Auden W. H. 1907-1973
´The Witnesses'
The sky is darkening like a stain;
Something is going to fall like rain,
And it won't be flowers.
Beecher Henry Ward 1813-1887
Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile, some have a sad expression, some are pensive and diffident, others again are plain, honest and upright.
Byron Lord 1788-1824
„On This Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year"
My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!
Gilbert W. S. 1836-1911
The Mikado
The flowers that bloom in the spring,
Tra la,
Have nothing to do with the case.
Keats John 1795-1821
´Ode to a Nightingale'
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs.
Le Gallienne Richard 1866-1947
Song
She's somewhere in the sunlight strong,
Her tears are in the falling rain,
She calls me in the wind's soft song,
And with the flowers she comes again.
Longfellow Henry Wadsworth 1807-1882
´The Reaper and the Flowers'
There is a Reaper whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that frow between.
Lucretius 99-55 BC
De Rerum Natura
From the midst of the fountain of delights rises something bitter that chokes them all amongst the flowers.
Mao TSE-Tung 1893-1976
Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the
sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land.
Marvell Andrew 1621-1678
´The Garden'
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Mencken H.L. 1880-1956
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
Millay Edna St Vincent 1892-1950
April,
Comes like an idiot, babling, and strewing flowers.
Milton John 1608-1674
Paradise Lost
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
Montaigne Michel de 1533-1592
Essays
It might well be said of me that here I have merely made up a bunch of other men's flowers, and provided nothing of my own but the string to bind them.
O'Keefe Patrick 1872-1934
(slogan for the Society of American Florists)
Say it with flowers.
Owen Wilfred 1893-1918
´Anthem for Doomed Youth'
The pallor of girls' brows shall be thier pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Philips Ambrose c. 1675-1749
The First Pastoral
The flowers anew, returning seasons bring;
But beauty faded has no second spring.
Roethke Theodore 1908-1963
Deep in their roots,
All flowers keep the light.
Seeger Pete
Where have all the flowers gome?