Your Daily Poem

This site exists for one purpose only: to help dispel the ugly and absolutely untrue myth that poetry is boring. Granted, a lot of poetry is boring, but you won't find it here. At Your Daily Poem, you'll find poetry that is touching, funny, provocative, inspiring, uplifting, and surprising. It may punch you in the gut, it may bring tears to your eyes, it may make you laugh out loud, but it most assuredly will not bore you!

Poetry on YDP—by poets living and long dead, famous to completely unknown--is specially selected for accessibility and appeal. Thanks so much for visiting—and remember: a poem a day keeps the doldrums away!

Buttercups and Daisies
by
Eliza Cook

I never see a young hand hold
The starry bunch of white and gold,
But something warm and fresh will start
About the region of my heart;
My smile expires into a sigh;
I feel a struggling in my eye,
’Twixt humid drop and sparkling ray,
Till rolling tears have won their way;
For, soul and brain will travel back,
Through memory’s chequer’d mazes,
To days when I but trod life’s track
For buttercups and daisies.

There seems a bright and fairy spell
About their very names to dwell;
And though old Time has mark’d my brow
With care and thought, I love them now.
Smile, if you will, but some heartstrings
Are closest link’d to simplest things;
And these wild flowers will hold mine fast,
Till love, and life, and all be past;
And then the only wish I have
Is, that the one who raises
The turf sod o’er me, plant my grave
With buttercups and daisies.

This poem is in the public domain.

Eliza Cook (1818 -1889) was born in England, the daughter of a local tradesman. The son of the music master at a local Sunday School she attended encouraged her to produce her first volume of poetry. As her confidence grew, she submitted poems to a variety of newspapers and magazines and was published on a regular basis. Eventually she published her own weekly periodical of "utility and amusement" called Eliza Cooks Journal. Cook was a proponent of political freedom for women, and believed in the ideology of self-improvement through education, something she called "levelling up." This made her hugely popular with the working class public in both England and America.

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EstherJ:
Beautiful!
Posted 06/09/2026 12:28 PM

dotief@comcast.net:
Lovely poem. The same things that touch my heart were impacting those who lived long before me. How wonderful poetry is to allow us to realize that!
Posted 06/09/2011 07:46 AM

LRL:
buttercups...such a great word thank you for this poem, whomever was the choser.
Posted 06/09/2011 07:40 AM

joyacey:
Thank you for today's floral bouquet. Daisies are a favorite flower of mine. I remember spending hours on lazy summer days making daisy chains. Do kids still have time for that or are they too busy texting?
Posted 06/09/2011 05:13 AM

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