Poppies

Poppies are a group of a flowering plants, many of which are grown in gardens for their colorful flowers.

The poppy opes her scarlet purse of dreams.

Find me next a Poppy posy,
Type of his harangues so dozy.

The poppies hung
Dew-dabbled on their stalks.

Quotes

• But pleasures are like poppies spread,
  You seize the flower, its bloom is shed.
  • Robert Burns, Tam o' Shanter (1790).

• When poor Mama long restless lies
  She drinks the poppy's juice;
  That liquor soon can close her eyes,
  And slumber soft produce:
  O then my sweet, my happy boy
  Will thank the Poppy-flower,
  Which brings the sleep to dear Mama,
  At midnight's darksome hour.
  • Sara Coleridge, Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children (1853)

• Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the high aesthetic band,
  If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand.
  • W. S. Gilbert, Patience (1881), Act I.

• Not poppy nor mandragora
  Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world
  Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
  Which thou owedst yesterday.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (1604), Act III, scene iii; Iago, of Othello.

• Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro
  Languescit moriens; lassove papavera collo
  Demisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur.
  • His snowy neck reclines upon his breast,
    Like a fair flow'r by the keen share oppress'd:
    Like a white poppy sinking on the plain,
    Whose heavy head is overcharg'd with rain.
  • Virgil, The Aeneid, IX, 435 (trans. John Dryden).

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 613-614.

• I sing the Poppy! The frail snowy weed!
  The flower of Mercy! that within its heart
  Doth keep "a drop serene" for human need,
  A drowsy balm for every bitter smart.
  For happy hours the Rose will idly blow ,
  The Poppy hath a charm for pain and woe.
  • Mary A. Barr, White Poppies.

• Central depth of purple,
  Leaves more bright than rose,
  Who shall tell what brightest thought
  Out of darkness grows?
  Who, through what funereal pain,
  Souls to love and peace attain?
  • Leigh Hunt, Songs and Chorus of the Flowers, Poppies.

• We are slumberous poppies,
  Lords of Lethe downs,
  Some awake and some asleep,
  Sleeping in our crowns.
  What perchance our dreams may know,
  Let our serious beauty show.
  • Leigh Hunt, Songs and Chorus of the Flowers, Poppies.

• The poppy opes her scarlet purse of dreams.
  • Scharmel Iris, Early Nightfall.

• Through the dancing poppies stole
  A breeze most softly lulling to my soul.
  • John Keats, Endymion (1818), Book I, line 565.

• The poppies hung
  Dew-dabbled on their stalks.
  • John Keats, Endymion (1818), Book I, line 681.

• Every castle of the air
  Sleeps in the fine black grains, and there
  Are seeds for every romance, or light
  Whiff of a dream for a summer night.
  • Amy Lowell, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed.

• Visions for those too tired to sleep,
  These seeds cast a film over eyes which weep.
  • Amy Lowell, Sword Blades and Poppy Seed.

• In Flanders' fields the poppies blow
  Between the crosses, row on row,
  That mark our place, and in the sky,
  The larks, still bravely singing, fly
  Scarce heard among the guns below.
  • Col. John McCrae, In Flander's Fields (We shall not Sleep).

• Find me next a Poppy posy,
  Type of his harangues so dozy.
  • Thomas Moore, Wreaths for the Ministers.

• And would it not be proud romance
  Falling in some obscure advance,
  To rise, a poppy field of France?
  • William A. Percy, Poppy Fields.

• Let but my scarlet head appear
  And I am held in scorn;
  Yet juice of subtile virtue lies
  Within my cup of curious dyes.
  • Christina G. Rossetti, "Consider the Lilies of the Field".

• Gentle sleep!
  Scatter thy drowsiest poppies from above;
  And in new dreams not soon to vanish, bless
  My senses with the sight of her I love.
  • Horace Smith, Poppies and Sleep.

• And far and wide, in a scarlet tide,
  The poppy's bonfire spread.
  • Bayard Taylor, Poems of the Orient, The Poet in the East, Stanza 4.

• Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare,
  And left the flushed print in a poppy there:
  Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came,
  And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame.
  With burnt mouth red like a lion's it drank
  The blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank,
  And clipped its cup in the purpurate shine
  When the eastern conduits ran with wine.
  • Francis Thompson, The Poppy.

• Bring poppies for a weary mind
  That saddens in a senseless din.
  • William Winter, The White Flag.