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has all its unhappiness. " Yet it is refreshing to realize that 

 even a flower may rear its charming head generation after 

 generation with less change than man makes around it. 

 Since the old days at Tabard when poets held dayesye in such ^ 

 high esteem, how have styles changed; how have weeds 

 become flowers and flowers alas seemed weeds and the 

 generous English daisy not the least of these. Danger 

 challenges when flower or fruit, nature or man spreads 

 bounty with too lavish a plenteousness. Generosity is 

 almost the surest road to disparagement in this imapprecia- 

 tive world, where even Boswell could tell us of the great 

 man who "was so generally civil that nobody thanked 

 him for it." How aptly might this be said of the daisy 

 in its long years of later neglect! But a pendulum which 

 swings over will in due course come swinging back, and 

 styles which change once shall in the end change once 

 again. So it has been with this flower of the hedgerows 

 which is come into its own even as Wordsworth insisted 

 that it would. 



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( *' Child of the Year! that round dost run 

 Thy pleasant course, — when day's begun 

 As ready to salute the sun 



As lark or leveret. 

 Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain; 

 Nor be less dear to future men 

 Than in old time; — thou not in vain 



Art Nature's favourite." 



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