Anemone

Thy subtle charm is strangely given,
My fancy will not let thee be, ,
Then poise not thus 'twixt earth and heaven,
O white anemone!

Anemone, so well
Named of the wind, to which thou art all free.

Anemone is a genus of flowering plants in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae. Plants of the genus are commonly called windflowers.

Quotes

• Tears the Paphian shed, drop by drop for the drops of Adonis’
  Blood; and on earth each drop, as it fell, grew into a blossom:
  Roses sprang from the blood, and the tears gave birth to the wind-flower.
  • Bion of Smyrna, "Lament for Adonis", as translated by J. A. Symonds Jr. in The Century Guild Hobby Horse (October 1890)

• Within the woods,
  Whose young and half transparent leaves scarce cast
  A shade, gray circles of anemones
  Danced on their stalks.
  • William Cullen Bryant, "The Old Man's Counsel", in The U.S. Magazine and Democratic Review (1840), p. 111.

• Or, bide thou where the poppy blows
  With windflowers frail and fair.
  • William Cullen Bryant, "The Arctic Lover to His Mistress", st. 4, in Poems (1834), p. 56

• The little windflower, whose just opened eye
  Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at.
  • William Cullen Bryant, "A Winter Piece", in Through the Year with the Poets, ed. O. F. Adams (1885), p. 63

• The spring, long retarded by previous cold, had now begun in all its comeliness, and life was rampant. Already, over the first emerald of the grass, the dandelion was showing yellow, and the red-pink anemone was hanging its tender head.
  • Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls (1842), Part II, Ch. 1, as translated by C. J. Hogarth (1916)

• Thy subtle charm is strangely given,
  My fancy will not let thee be,
  Then poise not thus 'twixt earth and heaven,
  O white anemone!
  • Elaine Goodale, "Anemone", st. 5, In Berkshire with the Wild Flowers (1879–80), p. 22

• The starry, fragile windflower,
    Poised above in airy grace,
  Virgin white, suffused with blushes,
    Shyly droops her lovely face.
  • Elaine Goodale, "The First Flowers", ll. 1–4, reported in The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1896), p. 250

• Anemone, so well
  Named of the wind, to which thou art all free.
  • George MacDonald, "Wild Flowers", l. 9, in The Disciple, and Other Poems (1867), p. 267

• From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed,
  Anemones, auritulas, enriched
  With shining meal o'er all their velvet leaves.
  • James Thomson, The Seasons: Spring (1728), l. 533

• Thou lookest up with meek, confiding eye
  Upon the clouded smile of April's face,
  Unharmed though Winter stands uncertain by,
  Eyeing with jealous glance each opening grace.
  • Jones Very, "The Windflower", in Essays and Poems (1839), p. 123

External links

• Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 26