Daffodils

Daffodil is an informal name for the Narcissus, a type of flower.

• If thou hast a loaf of bread, sell half and buy the flowers of the narcissus; for bread nourisheth the body, but the flowers of the narcissus the soul.
  • Oswald Crawfurd, Round the Calendar in Portugal (1890), p. 114, quoting Mohammed.

• Daffodils,
  That come before the swallow dares, and take
  The winds of March with beauty.
  • William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act IV, scene 3, line 118.

• When the face of night is fair in the dewy downs
  And the shining daffodil dies.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Maud; A Monodrama (1855), Part III, Stanza 1.

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 155.

• The daffodil is our doorside queen;
  She pushes upward the sword already,
  To spot with sunshine the early green.
  • William Cullen Bryant, An Invitation to the Country.

• What ye have been ye still shall be
  When we are dust the dust among,
  O yellow flowers!
  • Austin Dobson, To Daffodils.

• Fair daffadils, we weep to see
  You haste away so soone;
  As yet the early-rising sun
  Has not attained its noone.
  * * * * *
  We have short time to stay as you,
  We have as short a spring;
  As quick a growth to meet decay
  As you or anything.
  • Robert Herrick, Daffadills.

• When a daffadill I see,
  Hanging down his head t'wards me,
  Guesse I may, what I must be:
  First, I shall decline my head;
  Secondly, I shall be dead:
  Lastly, safely buryed.
  • Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648), Divination by a Daffadill.

• "O fateful flower beside the rill—
  The Daffodil, the daffodil!"
  • Jean Ingelow, Persephone, Stanza 16.

• It is daffodil time, so the robins all cry,
  For the sun's a big daffodil up in the sky,
  And when down the midnight the owl calls "to-whoo"!
  Why, then the round moon is a daffodil too;
  Now sheer to the bough-tops the sap starts to climb,
  So, merry my masters, it's daffodil time.
  • Clinton Scollard, Daffodil Time.

• O Love-star of the unbeloved March,
  When cold and shrill,
  Forth flows beneath a low, dim-lighted arch
  The wind that beats sharp crag and barren hill,
  And keeps unfilmed the lately torpid rill!
  • Aubrey De Vere, Ode to the Daffodil.

• Daffy-down-dilly came up in the cold,
  Through the brown mould
  Although the March breeze blew keen on her face,
  Although the white snow lay in many a place.
  • Anna Warner, Daffy-Down-Dilly.

• There is a tiny yellow daffodil,
  The butterfly can see it from afar,
  Although one summer evening's dew could fill
  Its little cup twice over, ere the star
  Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold,
  And be no prodigal.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Burden of Stys.

• A host of golden daffodils;
  Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
  Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
  • William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.

Wikipedia has an article about:

Narcissus (plant)

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