‘And sweeter far the early blow
Fast following after storms of Woe
Than (Comfort’s riper season come)
Are full-blown joys and Pleasure’s gaudy bloom.’
Thanks, Coleridge,
for your ‘To A Primrose’
of 1796;
thanks for your verse of worth.
Somebody probably
still calls Winter ‘Woe’
and says ‘Comfort’ for ‘Earth’.
But ‘blow’ for ‘flower’
I’d never heard;
and nobody
says ‘blew’ instead of ‘flowered’.
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