The Flowers

by Rudyard Kipling

 Buy my English posies!
 Kent and Surrey may,
 Violets of the Undercliff
 Wet with Channel spray;
 Cowslips from a Devon combe,
 Midland furze afire,
 Buy my English posies
 And I'll sell your heart's desire!
 
 Buy my English posies!
 You that scorn the May,
 Won't you greet a friend from home
 Half the world away?
 Green against the draggled drift,
 Faint and frail but first,
 Buy my Northern blood-root
 And I'll know where you were nursed:
Robin down the logging-road whistles, "Come to me!"
Spring has found the maple-grove, the sap is running free.
All the winds of Canada call the ploughing-rain.
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!
 
 Buy my English posies!
 Here's to match your need,
 Buy a tuft of royal heath,
 Buy a bunch of weed
 White as sand of Muizenberg
 Spun before the gale,
 Buy my heath and lilies
 And I'll tell you whence you hail!
Under hot Constantia broad the vineyards lie,
Throned and thorned the aching berg props the speckless sky,
Slow below the Wynberg firs trails the tilted wain,
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!
 
 Buy my English posies!
 You that will not turn,
 Buy my hot-wood clematis,
 Buy a frond o' fern
 Gathered where the Erskine leaps
 Down the road to Lorne,
 Buy my Christmas creeper
 And I'll say where you were born!
West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin,
They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn,
Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main,
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!
 
 Buy my English posies!
 Here's your choice unsold!
 Buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom,
 Buy the kowhai's gold
 Flung for gift on Taupo's face,
 Sign that spring is come,
 Buy my clinging myrtle
 And I'll give you back your home!
Broom behind the windy town, pollen of the pine,
Bell-bird in the leafy deep where the ratas twine,
Fern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plain,
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!
 
 Buy my English posies!
 Ye that have your own
 Buy them for a brother's sake
 Overseas, alone!
 Weed ye trample underfoot
 Floods his heart abrim,
 Bird ye never heeded,
 Oh, she calls his dead to him!
Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas;
Woe for us if we forget, we who hold by these!
Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land,
Masters of the Seven Seas, oh, love and understand.