Fair Daffodils, Fair Poets

for oft when on my couch I lie, garden-surfing the internet...

I've been enjoying so much out of doors, it feels almost impossible to make time to come in and write. And now i am here, at my desk, to make a choice: things are becoming very good in the garden, at Calderstones, at home and at allotment, too. 

First, a daffodil for you:

Narcissus Barrett Browning, Back Garden March 2025

This is the lovely Narcissus Barrett Browning, and whoever bred her must have seen a picture of Elizabeth Barrett Browning with her head nodding. The small, neat flowers are held at an extraordinarily modest angle. And yet looking at this painting of EBB, she doesn’t look as ‘modest’ as I had imagined she might when I hadn’t looked at her properly. She looks serious, and a little lived in, perhaps pained. Wise perhaps. But her head is nodding slightly.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, by Michele Gordigiani oil on canvas, 1858. National Portrait Gallery.

There’s another lovely picture of her, again courtesy of NPG:

My goodness, the eyes! The deep gaze-wide beauty of them.

A poem by EBB:

Sonnet 44

Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers
Plucked in the garden, all the summer through
And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers,
So, in the like name of that love of ours,
Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too,
And which on warm and cold days I withdrew
From my heart’s ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers
Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue,
And wait thy weeding; yet here’s eglantine,
Here’s ivy!— take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

She offers her thoughts in return for the flowers her lover has been bringing her. She picked them from ‘her heart’s ground.’ Is the lover gone? The garden of her heart waits for weeding… Read this poem with Katie, Director of Literature at the Reader, here.

Chasing around for information on the flower, I found that it was introduced in 1945 by the daffodil breeder JWA Lefeber, of Noordwijk (Netherlands, to the south of Amsterdam). As I looked and looked, (including this wonderful discovery of the Tamar Valley Packing Shed) I began to wonder if my EBB was in fact the EBB. Mine had a pale yellow cup. Most of the daffodils sites I’ve looked at show her with a white cup.

I’m just going to go back out and have another look…

Returning a little while later…. Yes, she’s a white not yellow. I think the pale primrose yellow is the starter colour with a fade to white.

I bought a lot of these Barrett Browning for the borders at Calderstones, to feed into our Readers’ Garden, where we are seeking out plants with literary names, inspired by the David Austen roses we were given in 2019. Photos of these borders next week, i promise.

Meanwhile, if you know any plants with literary names - or plants immortalised in literature - please let me know! We know the Literary Roses, but what else is there?

While I was out there checking, the colour of EBB, I did my daily Prunus Shirotae worship, sitting on the little bench among the branches, watching the bees. Oh, it is short-lived, we know, we know. I stood here a few days ago with Old Pal and we remembered the Housman poem and changed the numbers round to match our age… at our age, we’ve gotta enjoy every blossom.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

I always think with this poem what a terrible kind of sum the poet has done. You can look at cherries fifty times in your life. it’s that limited! When you are twenty you can do that! But I didn’t find the poem til I was over thirty!

And I will be seventy at the end of the year. Every cherry blossom I see from now is a bonus.

There’s a good article here, on a wonderful blog, about Housman and the cherry.

Old Pal said she didn’t think of cherry trees in woods, and I agreed, but said I’d assumed it would be the Wild Cherry, Bird Cherry. Some good pictures and facts about these at treeguideuk.co.uk.

I do love this tree. Think we should plant one at Calderstones.

But of course, that isn’t what I picture when I read Housman’s poem. I picture something like my Shirotae.

Bee enjoying rummaging through every blossom on Prunus Shirotae, March 2025

Old Pal and I looked at the daffodils in the garden, too, and I said, ‘Fair Daffodils, we weep to see thee haste away so soon…’ and asked her, who said that? Herrick, she said, quick as Spring. She hasn’t lost it, though she lost her Kindle for three months.

 To Daffodils  

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.

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.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again. 

Robert Herrick. (b.1591)

Love the patterning here, which he may have shaped so he could sing it. ‘Stay, stay’ - imagine that with a lute. He was a lyric poet. ‘We have as short a spring’, oh yes, we know, we know, pass me the eye cream! But so what, Old Pal: we’re alive now, with our heads in the blossom! Up close there is a lovely almondy smell, too. And for the past few days the blossom has been full of bees.

But - we know, we know - cherry blossom is even shorter lived than the daffodils.

And what were daffodils like in Herrick’s time, I wondered, were they those little hoop daffodils? Then I found a terrific page on the RHS website. In Herrick’s day they were native daffodils, just at the beginning of their long career in English gardens.

Other Good Things in The Garden Today

Top Row: Viburnum Carlessii in bud, gorgeous bi-coloured Griselinia. Bottom Row: Unknown Hellebore, Amelanchier in Bud.