Flowers by the Sea

In springtime the flowers of the seaside like the flowers of the woods

Start the year with perfection. First primroses nestle in the sun:

They overlook a bay

Where eider-duck are flapping and playing, cooing like pigeons.

Next pink thrift

Crowns the whole top of a rock sea-surrounded:

Blue waves and white foam

Curl far below. In summertime viper's bugloss,

Party-coloured and bristly,

Stands erect among the sandhills in groups, like soldiers in coloured uniforms

Sweltering in the heat,

Till a damp haar and cold wind shakes them, and shakes too the heads

Of sea-lavender in the rock-chinks,

And golden samphire, glowing in the very teeth of the misty wind.

As summer wears on

And far into the autumn, along the borders of shingly beaches,

Yellow horned poppy

Branches and extends its jointed stems and hoary leaves;

And sea-holly, powdery

Blue-grey-green, of strange and mystical appearance.