Flowers In Poetry Flowers are nature’s way of showcasing its beauty. The colors, smells, varieties and overall appeal of flowers are enough to inspire poets, authors and writers to capture their essence in words. But although they try to capture a flower’s beauty in prose, nothing even compares to the real thing! But still, some of history’s best poetry and words came about because of looking at a flower. Flowers are powerful things. They have the power to intoxicate our words, making its description in a poem make our mind conjure beautiful images that invigorates our senses and souls. A poet’s description of a flower’s beauty can whisk us away to an endless flower field or soaking up the sun’s rays in a beautiful garden. Flowers are symbols used to describe a writer’s one true love and also the beauty of life. Even the word for a book of poems, or “anthology,” comes from the Greek word for flower. There are so many poems that have been written about flowers, it’s hard to narrow down the very best ones; that really up to each individualized person. One of the most iconic poems related to flowers is something everyone knows by hard: “Roses are red, violets are blue.” Floral poetry is one of the biggest genres in the history of the written word and comes in all forms. From the Ancient Greeks to Shakespeare and so many in between, poets have used the beauty and uniqueness of flowers as sources of inspiration for their own pieces. These poets use the symbolisms and meanings of flowers to help get their point across, which is often tied to love and beauty. Here are some of the top poems about flowers: Roses – George Eliot “You love the roses – so do I. I wish the sky would rain down roses, as they rain From off the shaken bush. Why will it not? Then all the valley would pink and white And soft to tread on. They would fall as light As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be Like sleeping and like walking, all at once!” THE ROSE  - Christina Rossetti The lily has a smooth stalk,
Will never hurt your hand;
But the rose upon her brier
Is lady of the land. There’s sweetness in an apple tree,
And profit in the corn;
But lady of all beauty
Is a rose upon a thorn. When with moss and honey
She tips her bending brier,
And half unfolds her glowing heart,
She sets the world on fire.
 Flowers by the Sea -William Carlos William “When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s
edge, unseen, the salt ocean
lifts its form—chicory and daisies
tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone
but color and the movement—or the shape
perhaps—of restlessness, whereas
the sea is circled and sways
peacefully upon its plantlike stem
 The Flower – Alfred Lord Tennyson Once in a golden hour
I cast to earth a seed.
Up there came a flower,
The people said, a weed.

To and fro they went
Thro' my garden bower,
And muttering discontent
Cursed me and my flower.

Then it grew so tall
It wore a crown of light,
But thieves from o'er the wall
Stole the seed by night.

Sow'd it far and wide
By every town and tower,
Till all the people cried,
'Splendid is the flower! '

Read my little fable:
He that runs may read.
Most can raise the flowers now,
For all have got the seed.

And some are pretty enough,
And some are poor indeed; 
And now again the people
Call it but a weed.”  Flower Of Love – Oscar Wilde “Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault was, had I not been made of common 
clay
I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the 
larger day.

From the wildness of my wasted passion I had struck a better, clearer song,
Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled with some Hydra-headed wrong.

Had my lips been smitten into music by the kisses that but made them bleed,
You had walked with Bice and the angels on that verdant and enamelled meed.

I had trod the road which Dante treading saw the suns of seven circles shine,
Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening, as they opened to the Florentine.

And the mighty nations would have crowned me, who am crownless now and without 
name,
And some orient dawn had found me kneeling on the threshold of the House of 
Fame.

I had sat within that marble circle where the oldest bard is as the young,
And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the lyre's strings are ever strung.

Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out the poppy-seeded wine,
With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead, clasped the hand of noble love in 
mine.

And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms brush the burnished bosom of the 
dove,
Two young lovers lying in an orchard would have read the story of our love;

Would have read the legend of my passion, known the bitter secret of my heart,
Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as we two are fated now to part.

For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by the cankerworm of truth,
And no hand can gather up the fallen withered petals of the rose of youth.

Yet I am not sorry that I loved you -ah! what else had I a boy to do? - 
For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the silent-footed years pursue.

Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and when once the storm of youth is 
past,
Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death the silent pilot comes at last.

And within the grave there is no pleasure, for the blindworm battens on the 
root,
And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree of Passion bears no fruit.

Ah! what else had I to do but love you? God's own mother was less dear to me,
And less dear the Cytheraean rising like an argent lily from the sea.

I have made my choice, have lived my poems, and, though youth is gone in 
wasted days,
I have found the lover's crown of myrtle better than the poet's crown of bays.”