the first spring flowers

The first celandines I've seen this year, pictured at Playford in Suffolk at the beginning of March. Its local names include golden guineas, golden stars, and starflower. Wordsworth knew it as a barometer:



There is a flower, the lesser celandine
That shrinks, like  many more, from cold and rain,
And, the first moment that the sun doth shine,
Bright as the sun himself, tis out again.

And a single daisy,  one of John Clare's favourite flowers:

The daisy is a happy flower,

And comes at early spring,

And brings with it the sunny hour

When bees are on the wing….

He loved the violet, too, calling it a 'lone dweller in the pathless shade', coming into flower when 'watery skies are full/ Of streaming dappled clouds so pale.'

The 6th century poet Fortunatus, when he sent violets to St Rhadegund, wrote ‘Of all the fragrant herbs, none I send can compare with the nobleness of the purple violets; they shine in royal purple, and perfume and beauty unite in their petals. May you show forth in your life the peace they represent.’

Suppose a river or a drop of water, an apple or a sand, an ear of corn, or an herb: God knoweth infinite excellencies in it more than we. He seeth how it relateth to angels and men….
Thomas Traherne