Honeysuckle Poems

Table of Contents

1. The Wild Honeysuckle

   by Philip Freneau

   
   

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   Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
   Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
   Untouched thy honied blossoms blow,
   Unseen thy little branches greet:
   No roving foot shall crush thee here,
   No busy hand provoke a tear.
   

   By Nature’s self in white arrayed,
   She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
   And planted here the guardian shade,
   And sent soft waters murmuring by;
   Thus quietly thy summer goes,
   Thy days declining to repose.
   

   Smit with those charms, that must decay,
   I grieve to see your future doom;
   They died—nor were those flowers more gay,
   The flowers that did in Eden bloom;
   Unpitying frosts and Autumn’s power
   Shall leave no vestige of this flower.
   

   From morning suns and evening dews
   At first thy little being came;
   If nothing once, you nothing lose,
   For when you die you are the same;
   The space between is but an hour,
   The frail duration of flower.
   

2. Honeysuckle

   by Agnes Mary Frances Robinson Duclaux

   
   

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   I gather from the hedgerows, where they spring,
   These sunshine-yellow flowers, grown sweet i' the air,
   Fearing to hope that ye can find them fair,
   Who at your wish could have a costlier thing.
   Lovers, for you no passion-flowers I bring,
   Nor any roses for your ladies' wear,
   No violets fragrant still from Sappho's hair,
   Nor laurel crowns to garland them that sing.
   

   But these are all I have, and these I give.
   True, they have languish'd since they came to town,
   As music suffers in the writing down,
   And well I know they have not long to live.
   Yet for your sakes these left their country ways,
   That, taken thence, are grown too poor for praise.
   

3. Nocturnes of the Honeysuckle

   by Agnes Mary Frances Robinson Duclaux

   
   

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   I

   Forever shed your sweetness on the night,
   Dear honeysuckle, flower of our delight!
   

   Forever breathe the mystery of that hour
   When her hand touched me, lightlier than a flower, —
   

   And life became forever strange and sweet,
   A gift to lay with worship at her feet.
   

   II

   Oh, flower of the honeysuckle,
   Tell me how often the long night through
   She turns in her dream to the open window,
   She turns in her dream to you.
   

   Oh, flower of the honeysuckle,
   Tell me how tenderly out of the dew
   You breathe her a dream of that night of wonder
   When life was fashioned anew.
   

   Oh, flower of the honeysuckle,
   Tell me how long ere, the sweet night through,
   She will turn not to you but to me in the darkness,
   And dream and desire come true.
   

4. The Honeysuckle

   by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

   
   

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   I plucked a honeysuckle where
   The hedge on high is quick with thorn,
   And climbing for the prize, was torn,
   And fouled my feet in quag-water;
   And by the thorns and by the wind
   The blossom that I took was thinn'd,
   And yet I found it sweet and fair.
   

   Thence to a richer growth I came,
   Where, nursed in mellow intercourse,
   The honeysuckles sprang by scores,
   Not harried like my single stem,
   All virgin lamps of scent and dew.
   So from my hand that first I threw,
   Yet plucked not any more of them.
   

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