To Daffodils

Robert Herrick

Teacher card

Published: 1648, in Hesperides and Noble Numbers
Length: 20 lines, 94 words, 1 word in 19 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 5–6. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: retirement, spring, thanks
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

Fair daffodils, we weep to seeYou haste away so soon;As yet the early-rising sunHas not attain'd his noon.Stay, stay,Until the hasting dayHas runBut to the evensong;And, having prayed together, weWill go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,We have as short a spring;As quick a growth to meet decay,As you, or anything.We die,As your hours do, and dryAway,Like to the summer's rain;Or as the pearls of morning's dew,Ne'er to be found again.

Robert Herrick (died 1674), Hesperides and Noble Numbers (1648), lines 5723–5743 of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Its lines are dealt for names in posy cardsin posy · 20 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
posy.popplepoetry.com/sources#he-daff

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/herrick-to-daffodils · popplepoetry.com