Primrose
Primrose - meaning Summary
Vision from a Primrose
The speaker recalls a childhood moment when a single primrose triggers a mystical vision of Christ transfigured and a sense of revealed truth. The flower acts as a small guide to spiritual illumination, experienced with tenderness and tears. That clarity fades: the primrose and its light are lost, becoming only a ghostly tree among stars. The poem mourns how advancing years diminish capacity for spontaneous wonder in ordinary nature.
Read Complete AnalysesUpon a bank I sat, a child made seer Of one small primrose flowering in my mind. Better than wealth it is, I said, to find One small page of Truth's manuscript made clear. I looked at Christ transfigured without fear-- The light was very beautiful and kind, And where the Holy Ghost in flame had signed I read it through the lenses of a tear. And then my sight grew dim, I could not see The primrose that had lighted me to Heaven, And there was but the shadow of a tree Ghostly among the stars. The years that pass Like tired soldiers nevermore have given Moments to see wonders in the grass.
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