When saw I yesterday walking apart <br />In a leafy place where the cattle wait? <br />Something to keep for a charm in my heart- <br />A little sweet girl in a garden gate. <br />Laughing she lay in the gold sun's might, <br />And held for a target to shelter her, <br />In her little soft fingers, round and white, <br />The gold-rimmed face of a sunflower. <br /> <br />Laughing she lay on the stone that stands <br />For a rough-hewn step in that sunny place, <br />And her yellow hair hung down to her hands, <br />Shadowing over her dimpled face. <br />Her eyes like the blue of the sky, made dim <br />With the might of the sun that looked at her, <br />Shone laughing over the serried rim, <br />Golden set, of the sunflower. <br /> <br />Laughing, for token she gave to me <br />Three petals out of the sunflower;- <br />When the petals are withered and gone, shall be <br />Three verses of mine for praise of her, <br />That a tender dream of her face may rise <br />And lighten me yet in another hour, <br />Of her sunny hair and her beautiful eyes, <br />Laughing over the golden sunflower.<br /><br />Archibald Lampman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/three-flower-petals/
