Pure--throated Flower, <br />Smelling of Spring, <br />Shaped beyond art's <br />Imagining; <br /> <br />Fathomless colour, <br />Breathed as an ether <br />Of flame and of stillness <br />Melted together; <br /> <br />Soul of the sun's beam <br />Changed to fairy <br />Flesh, so delicate, <br />Poised and airy! <br /> <br />I think of my own kind, <br />Hardly winning <br />A thousand battles <br />For joy's beginning; <br /> <br />Victory bloody <br />And with evil shared, <br />Splendour soiled <br />And greatness snared; <br /> <br />Truth conceded <br />Or won by halves, <br />Pitiful sores <br />And sorrier salves; <br /> <br />Blind authority <br />Treading like oxen's heels <br />All that sees clearest, <br />All that most feels. <br /> <br />But you are absolute <br />(Follow who can!) <br />As a commandment <br />Of God to man. <br /> <br />Straight you spring <br />And whole you spend, <br />And fall upon fruitful earth, <br />Clean to the end. <br /> <br />O to be pure <br />As a single sense, <br />Keen as scorn, <br />As love intense, <br /> <br />To live in the light, <br />And to die in a deed <br />That is faith's Amen <br />And has sown its seed!<br /><br />Robert Laurence Binyon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-daffodil-2/
