blossom quotes

For a full spring-tide of blossom seethed and departed hence, Leaving land-locked pools of jonquils by sunny garden fence.

- SirJohn Betjeman
  New Bats in Old Belfries,'May-Day Song for North Oxford'.

   I think there is a blossom about me of something more distinguished than the generality of mankind.

-James Boswell
  Journal entry, 20  Jan. Collected in F  A Pottle (ed) Boswell's London Journal (1950).

For the last blossom is the first blossom And the first blossom is the best blossom And when from Eden we take our way The morning after is the first day.

- (Frederick) Louis MacNeice
'Apple Blossom', in Collected Poems,1966.

For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered isgrief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

- Algernon Charles Swinburne
  Atlanta in Calydon, chorus,'When the hounds of spring'.

The sun has gane down o'er the lofty Benlomond, And left the red clouds to preside o'er the scene, While lanely I stray, in the calm simmer gloamin', To muse on sweet Jessie, the flower o' Dunblane. How sweet is the brier wi' its saft faulding blossom, And sweet is the birk, wi' its mantle o'green; Yet sweeter, and fairer, and dear to this bosom, Is lovely young Jessie, the flower o' Dunblane.

- Robert Tannahill
  'Jessie, the Flower o' Dunblane', stanza1.

There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate. She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate; The red rose cries,'She is near, she is near;' And the white rose weeps,'She is late;' The larkspur listens,'I hear, I hear;' And the lily whispers,'I wait.' She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airya tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat; Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red.

-Tennyson
  Maud, pt.1, sect.22, stanzas10^11, l. 908^23.

And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep, And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.

-Tennyson
  Maud, pt.3, sect.6, stanza 4, l.51^3.

O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom, or the bole? O body swayed to music,O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?

-W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
  'Among School Children', stanza 8. collected in TheTower (1928).