Buttercups and Daisies Lyrics
Two small flowers push up through frozen grass before the trees have leaves, and the poem calls them hardy little children of the cold. Mary Howitt's Buttercups and Daisies has four verses and twenty-eight lines.
Buttercups and Daisies
Buttercups and daisies,
Oh, the pretty flowers;
Coming ere the spring time,
To tell of sunny hours.
While the trees are leafless,
While the fields are bare,
Buttercups and daisies
Spring up here and there.
Ere the snowdrop peepeth,
Ere the crocus bold,
Ere the early primrose
Opes its paly gold,
Somewhere on the sunny bank
Buttercups are bright;
Somewhere 'mong the frozen grass
Peeps the daisy white.
Little hardy flowers,
Like to children poor,
Playing in their sturdy health
By their mother's door,
Purple with the north wind,
Yet alert and bold;
Fearing not, and caring not,
Though they be a-cold!
What to them is winter!
What are stormy showers!
Buttercups and daisies
Are these human flowers!
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/buttercups-and-daisies/
- Type
- Poems for Children
- Written by
- Mary Howitt
- Tune
- Read brightly, with a lift on the first line of each verse
- Best for ages
- 4 to 9 years
What Does Buttercups and Daisies Mean?
The poem is about early flowers. In the first verse, buttercups and daisies appear while the trees are still bare and the fields have not turned green, and they "tell of sunny hours" still to come. In the second, the poet says they arrive even before the snowdrop, the crocus and the early primrose: somewhere on a sunny bank the buttercups are already bright, and a white daisy peeps out of the frozen grass.
The third verse compares the flowers to children who play outdoors by their mother's door in all weathers, purple with the north wind but alert and bold, "fearing not, and caring not" that they are cold. The fourth asks what winter or stormy showers can do to such sturdy things, and calls the flowers "human flowers".
Old words: ere means before, peepeth means peeps, opes means opens, paly means pale, and a-cold means cold. A snowdrop, a crocus and a primrose are all early spring flowers.
History and Origin
Mary Howitt (1799 to 1888) was an English writer who wrote many poems and stories for children. Hamilton Wright Mabie's anthology Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories prints this poem with her name, and also her better-known poem The Spider and the Fly.
Learning Activities
- Spring watch: look for the first daisies on a lawn and note the date, then see which other flowers follow.
- Two colours: draw a buttercup and a daisy side by side and say which colour is which; look, but do not pick or taste buttercups.
- Brave flowers: talk about what the flowers in the poem do when it gets cold, and what children do.
- Old words: make a list of the words that sound old, such as ere and opes, and say them the modern way.