Classic Poem

The yarrow's beauty: fools may laugh,
And yet the fields without it
Were shorne of half their comfort, half
Their magic — who can doubt it?

Yon patches of a milky stain
In verdure bright or pallid
Are something like the deep refrain
That tunes a perfect ballad.

The meadows by its sober white —
Though few would bend to pick it —
Are tempered as the sounds of night
Are tempered by the cricket.

It blooms as in the fields of life
Those spirits bloom for ever,
Unnamed, unnoted in the strife,
Among the great and clever.

Who spread from an unconscious soul
An aura pure and tender,
A kindlier background for the whole,
Between the gloom and splendour.

Let others captivate the mass
With power and brilliant seeming:
The lily and the rose I pass,
The yarrow holds me dreaming.