Lenten Treasure
Janice Moore
To Daffodils Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
Fair daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attained his noon.
Stay,stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong;
And, having prayed 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.
Wild daffodil. Narcissus pseudonarcissus, or its folklore name: the Lent lily. A native woodland plant, whose clumps of nodding yellow flowers gladdened the hearts of the Wordsworths as they walked beside the lakes. The one, bright, sensory indulgence the humble and ascetic Welsh monk, and later Bishop David would allow to adorn his monastery and cell. The national symbol of Wales, its image reproduced in large green and yellow hats and face-paint; its plastic effigies waved proudly aloft at rugby matches. The many picture postcards and visitor photographs taken back home of its larger garden cultivar decorating in swathes the Cambridge Backs. The odd escapees from gardens that punctuate roadside verges, that we glimpse unexpectedly on our way somewhere else. We take such joy in seeing them singly or collectively, outside or inside; where their delicate fragrance incenses our homes. A Lenten treasure, whose bulbs the seventeenth century herbalist Nicholas Culpeper used to heal wounds, believing they had narcotic properties – a view borne out by research done into anti-cancer drugs by the Marie Curie Foundation, whose very recognisable symbol is an open daffodil flower.
The poet priest Robert Herrick treasured and celebrated the God-given natural world. He saw fearlessly both its beauty and fragility, making him all too aware of the swift passage of time, and indeed, of life itself. I’ve always loved this poem, with its perfect blend of celebration and pathos, that likens him to the Psalmist: ‘As for man his days are like grass,/ he flourishes as a flower of the field;/ for the wind passes over it, and it is gone.’ (Psalm 103: 15-16). Reflecting on our year since 2020, I was very struck by how I found even deeper meaning and lament in this poem. Largely through the media the sheer scale of how so many cherished individuals were suffering and dying – encapsulated for me by seeing the digging and filling-up of mass graves in the USA, the richest country in the world, to experiencing the current crisis in our National Health Service; the powerful poignancy of Herrick’s poem was overwhelming and I wept with him. But the following two verses of Psalm 130 reoriented me to remember and hold fast to the ‘steadfast love of the Lord’ whose everlasting faithfulness and righteousness holds together our past time and is promised to go ahead of us, as this 2021 springtime and Lent approaches.
