Spear Thistle

Where the broad sheepwalk bare and brown [Yields] scant grass pining after showers, And winds go fanning up and down The little strawy bents and nodding flowers, There the huge thistle, spurred with many thorns, The suncrackt upland's russet swells adorns. Not undevoid of beauty there they come, Armed warriors, waiting neither suns nor showers, Guarding the little clover plots to bloom While sheep nor oxen dare not crop their flowers Unsheathing their own knobs of tawny flowers When summer cometh in her hottest hours.…