*{~ Dandelion Prose, Poetic Verse & Passages ~}*

Dandelion Prose, Poetic Verse & Passages

This is a Dandy-Fine collection of unique dandelion writings -- poetic verses that are too short to be included in the Poetry Section, or are otherwise not poems, but rather just interesting snippets or commentary related to the dandelion flower, weed or seed; as well as song verses, anecdotes, and excerpts from Stories or books that are about--or at least mention or give reference to the dandelion flower, whether literally or as a metaphor. If you appreciate the Dandelion, then this section will be a Gem of Delight for you. But there is something unique for Everyonehere.. So grab your cup of dandelion Tea, Coffee, or Wine, and Read On..

The Dandelion
There was a pretty dandelion,
With lovely, fluffy hair
That glistened in the sunshine
And in the summer air
But, Oh' this pretty dandelion
Soon grew quite old and gray,
And, sad to tell, her charming hair
Blew many miles away

--Author Unknown
(Tiny Tot's Speaker, Designed for the Wee Ones: Composed of Recitations)

Dandelions
There surely is a gold mine somewhere underneath the grass,
For dandelions are popping out in every place you pass.
But if you want to gather some you'd better not delay,
For the gold will turn to silver soon and all will blow away..

--Anonymous
( (Graded Memory Selections By S. D. Waterman)

The Dandelion Cycle.
"Pretty little Goldilocks, shining in the sun,
Pray, what will become of you when the summer's done?"

"Then I'll be old Silverhead; for, as I grow old,
All my shining hair will be white instead of gold.

"And where rests a silver hair that has blown from me,
Other little Goldilocks in the Spring you'll see!

"Goldilocks to Silverhead, Silverhead to gold,
So the change is going on every year, I'm told."

The Dandelion Cycle. By Emilie Poulsson

Dandelion Thoughts
The common and despised Dandelion (Leotodon taraxacum) is one of the most correct "dial flowers," opening at seven in the morning and closing at fice in the afternoon: --

'Leontodons unfold
On the swart turf their ray-encircled gold,
With Sol's expanding beam the flowers unclose,
And rising Hesper lights them to repose.'

--Darwin
the floricultural cabinet, & florists magazine vol. xv

We are surrounded by dandelions.
They are so common that we hardly even notice them anymore. It is an oblivion that we choose, but they really shouldn’t be ignored.

What most people don’t realize, is how useful these “weeds” actually are: They have medicinal properties.
They are good to eat from the flowers to the roots.
They are vital to the survival of bees.
They are loved by many foraging animals.

Dandelions are hardy and adaptable. The can grow low to the ground or tall and strong. They only need a little bit of soil to thrive, which is why you see them in cracks in the sidewalk.

I am a dandelion. I am ugly and annoying to some, and beautiful and useful to those who really know me. I am bright. I am resilient. When I seemed to be fading and close to death, I came back even more beautiful. I am misunderstood, but I know my worth.

―Anonymous
https://recoverypride.org/dandelion

Selected Book Passage
"But there is also a way of finding out about the ball before it takes place. You know the boards which tell at what time the Gardens are to close to-day. Well, these tricky fairies sometimes slyly change the board on a ball night, so that it says the Gardens are to close at six-thirty for instance, instead of at seven. This enables them to get begun half an hour earlier.

If on such a night we could remain behind in the Gardens, as the famous Maimie Mannering did, we might see delicious sights, hundreds of lovely fairies hastening to the ball, the married ones wearing their wedding-rings round their waists, the gentlemen, all in uniform, holding up the ladies' trains, and linkmen running in front carrying winter cherries, which are the fairy-lanterns, the cloakroom where they put on their silver slippers and get a ticket for their wraps, the flowers streaming up from the Baby Walk to look on, and always welcome because they can lend a pin, the supper-table, with Queen Mab at the head of it, and behind her chair the Lord Chamberlain, who carries a dandelion on which he blows when Her Majesty wants to know the time..."

― "The Little White Bird By James M. Barrie"
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1376/1376-h/1376-h.htm

Stuart Hill said...
TO ONE LOST
II
It seems you were forever A feather waiting for the hurricane; I always expected you To be there for one moment And then gone in the next. But though the wind was strong, When it came it blew slow And stole your youth and beauty And finally your life Imperceptibly away, Like a vicious child With a dandelion clock.

― https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2014/10/loss-2.html

Let Them Be..
“If you see a dandelion as a weed, you’ll spray it. If you see it as a flower, you’ll draw it close, turn it this way and that, and become lost in the colossal burst of slender golden petals that spew sunshine into the darkest of souls. And so, how many things have we sprayed that could have illuminated our souls if we would have let them be more than what we let them be?”

― Craig D. Lounsbrough

Dandelions And Acceptance
"A man who took great pride in his lawn found himself with a large crop of dandelions. He tried every method he knew to get rid of them. Still they plagued him. Finally he wrote the department of agriculture. He enumerated all the things he had tried and closed his letter with the question: "What shall I do now?" In due course the reply came: "We suggest you learn to love them."

~*Anthony de Mello (Indian psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, writer and Jesuit priest)

Dandelion Heart
"Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God so wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell... The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near... Every thing is upward striving; 'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, - 'Tis the natural way of living."

~*James Russell Lowell (American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat)

Verse from the poem "from The Vision of Sir Launfal"

Also see: "To The Dandelion" Poem by James Russell Lowell

Dandelion Mythology
I know a story about the dandelion. The goddess, Freya, was very very, very sad. She had lost her husband. She went all over the earth shedding golden tears. Wherever a tear fell to the ground a golden dandelion sprang up.

― Hints on the Study of Hiawatha, Or Suggestions as to the Use of the Poem By Alice Marie Krackowizer

Gratitude And Appreciate
"I am well aware of the problems of the planet but I don’t wreck my days or nights obsessing about them. If you find yourself worrying about the state of the world, go outside, take your three breaths, address a tree and quietly say thank you. If you can’t find a tree, a dandelion will do. Gratitude is a good idea and it is very under-rated in our society. We definitely owe gratitude to the plant kingdom. They are on our side. So pick your tree and express gratitude to it as a representative of the world’s flora. Go for a walk in nature even for a few minutes every day."

~*Robert Bateman (Naturalist and wildlife painter)
Excerpt from: "Advice For A Happy Life"

All The People..
"When some portion of the biosphere is rather unpopular with the human race-a crocodile, a dandelion, a stony valley, a snowstorm, an odd-shaped flint-there are three sorts of human being who are particularly likely still to see point in it and befriend it. They are poets, scientists and children. Inside each of us, I suggest, representatives of all these groups can be found."

~*Mary Midgley (British philosopher and Lecturer)

Dandelion Thoughts
Folklore says that blowing the seeds off a dandelion is said to carry your thoughts and dreams to your loved one. At least, so they say...

Source: "Unusual Vegetables, Something New for this Year's Garden," Rodale Press Emmaus, PA.

Love and Dandelions
"Love won't be tampered with, love won't go away. Push it to one side and it creeps to the other. Throw it in the garbage and it springs up clean. Try to root it out and it only flourishes. Love is a weed, a dandelion that you poison from your heart. The taproots wait. The seeds blow off, ticklish, into a part of the yard you didn't spray. And one day, though you worked, though you prodded out each spiky leaf, you lift your eyes and dozens of fat golden faces bob in the grass."

~*Louise Erdrich (American author, writer)
Excerpt from: "The Bingo Palace"

In The Other Realm
"Bearing in his right paw the shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances, cut the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war; His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display - indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma. "

~*Gary Snyder (American Poet,essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist)
Excerpt from the book "Back on the Fire: Essays"

Young Dandelion
"Young Dandelion
On a hedge-side
Said young Dandelion
Who'll be my bride?

Said young Dandelion
With a sweet air,
I have my eye on
Miss Daisy fair. "

~*D.M. Mulock/Dinah Craik (English novelist and poet)
Verse/Quote titled "Young Dandelion" from The cyclopedia of practical quotations

Delightful Dandelions
The dear, little bright dandelions! How pretty and happy they look in the grass. They shine like tiny little suns. They drink the fresh dew for breakfast. They dine on sunshine all day long.

― Hints on the Study of Hiawatha, Or Suggestions as to the Use of the Poem By Alice Marie Krackowizer

Dandelion Madness
"What I know about living is the pain is never just ours Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo So I keep a listening to the moment the grief becomes a window When I can see what I couldn’t see before, through the glass of my most battered dream, I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds. So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin, don’t try to put me back in just say here we are together at the window aching for it to all get better"

~*Andrea Gibson (American poet and activist)
Verse from the poem "The Madness Vase / The Nutritionist"

Dandelion Quotation
“Christopher throws dandelion head after dandelion head into his bag. It's getting heavy now and his fingers are stained from the work but there are still so many left to kill. His biggest mistake is giving them names.”

― Brian Martinez, Kissing You is Like Trying to Punch a Ghost

Life And Freedom
"Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the sidewalk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your parent was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you."

~*Heather O'Neill (Canadian novelist, poet, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist)
Excerpt from the book "Lullabies for Little Criminals"

Dandelion Wine
"And there, row upon row, with the soft gleam of flowers opened at morning, with the light of this June sun glowing through a faint skin of dust, would stand the dandelion wine. Peer through it at the wintry day - the snow melted to grass, the trees were reinhabitated with bird, leaf, and blossoms like a continent of butterflies breathing on the wind. And peering through, color sky from iron to blue. Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in"

~*Ray Bradbury (American author and screenwriter)
Excerpt from the book "Dandelion Wine"

Dandelion Fair
O Dandelion, haste, for voices call yOu, Quickly your leaves unfurl; Bring slender stems, swaying in passing breezes, For children's hands to curl: Bring golden flowers, smiling in golden mornings, Closing tired eyes at night; Bring silver balls to scatter for the seeding, Downy and light.
DANDELION.— I haste to hear the welcome of the children. Who love my shining gold; Quickly I’ll fling it free o'er lawn and meadow.

--Western Teacher: Devoted to Schoolroom Methods. Practical ..., Volumes 21-22

Dandelion Fluff
"O voyagers a-sailing
Across the stainless blue!
O happy little traveler!
I long to go with you;
To dance beneath the sunshine
One golden summer hour,
Then seek the brown earth's waiting
breast,
And some day be a flower."

--Kate Brown, Plant Baby and Its Friends

Celebrating Dandelions
"To some the dandelion is a weed; but not to me, unless it take more than its share of space, for I always miss these little earth stars when they are absent. They intensify the sunshine shimmering on the lawn, making one smile involuntarily when seeing them. Moreover, they awaken pleasant memories, for a childhood in which dandelions had no part is a defective experience."

~*E.P. Roe (American novelist)
Excerpt from the book: "The Home Acre"

The Nature Of Dandelions
"To the fuki plant, dandelions, and their kind that lie for long patiently under the fallen snow, comes the season of breezy spring. No sooner do they see the light of the world, stretching their longing heads out from the cracks in the snow, than they are instantly nipped off. For these plants isn't the sorrow as deep as that of the child's parents whose child had accidentally died? They say everything in the plant and tree kingdom attains Buddhahood. Then they, too, must have Buddha-nature."

~*Kobayashi Issa (Japanese poet and lay Buddhist priest of the Jōdo Shinshū sect)
Verse from the poem "The Spring Of My Life and Selected Haiku"

June
When the waters dance with gladness, And the blue skies, bending over, Bear no trave of clouds or sadness, and the fields are spread with clover, When the feathery dandelion Stars with gold the emerald grasses, And each tip of bough and cion Droops with bloom in snowy masses, When the birds with joyous singing All their bliss and hope are telling, And the south wind balm is bringing, All the name of June are spelling.

--Ninette M. Lowater >Nt> Western Teacher: Devoted to Schoolroom Methods. Practical ..., Volumes 23-24

What Really Counts
"But afterall it's not the winning that matters, is it? Or is it? It's to coin a word the amenities that count: the smell of the dandelions, the puff of the pipe, the click of the bat, the rain on the neck, the chill down the spine, the slow, exquisite coming on of sunset and dinner and rheumatism "

~*Alistair Cooke (British-American writer, journalist, radio broadcaster and television personality)
Excerpt from: "America Observed: From the 1940s to the 1980s" /p>

A Dandelion Poem
"Little yellow dandelion,
Growing int he grass;
WIth your head of shining gold,
Merry little lass.
When your pretty hair turns white,
Peay what will you do
Will youplant a hundred more
flowers as bright as you?"

The Connecticut School Journal, Volume 6

To Pluck, Or Not To Pluck?
"Old stories would tell how Weavers would kill each other over aesthetic disagreements, such as whether it was prettier to destroy an army of a thousand men or to leave it be, or whether a particular dandelion should or should not be plucked. For a Weaver, to think was to think aesthetically. To act - to Weave - was to bring about more pleasing patterns. They did not eat physical food: they seemed to subsist on the appreciation of beauty."

~*China Miéville (British fantasy fiction author, essayist, comic book writer, socialist political activist)
Excerpt from the book: "Perdido Street Station"

A Dandelion Riddle
What gives milk
And it’s children fly;
Turns into a puff
As time goes by;
Named for the king of beasts
Yet wears a cheerful face;
Given to us in plenty
By God’s good grace?

--by Heidi Kennedy
Source

A Plant Barometer
The dandelion is an excellent barometer, one of the commonest and most reliable. It is when the blooms have seeded and are in the fluffy, feathery condition that its weather prophet facilities come to the fore. In fine weather the ball extends to the full, but when rain approaches, it shuts like an umbrella. If the weather is inclined to be showery it keeps shut all the time, only opening when the danger from the wet is past.

Camping For Boys, by H.W. Gibson
Source

Childhood Reflections
"I leave to children exclusively, but only for the life of their childhood, all and every the dandelions of the fields and the daisies thereof, with the right to play among them freely, according to the custom of children, warning them at the same time against the thistles. And I devise to children the yellow shores of creeks and the golden sands beneath the water thereof, with the dragon flies that skim the surface of said waters, and and the odors of the willows that dip into said waters, and the white clouds that float on high above the giant trees."

~*Williston Fish (American Attorney, businessman and author)
Excerpt from: "Last Will of Charles Lounsbury "

"Dandelions, Dandelions!
Like golden
stars are you,
Shining int he meadow grass and
sparkling with the dew.
Do you shine up yonder, dears, all the long night thro'
And then come dancing down with the
sun--
Because the children all love you."

The Connecticut School Journal, Volume 6

Blowing In The Wind
"To have an inner life, to think, to juggle and leap, to become a tightrope walker in the world of ideas. To attack, to riposte, to refute, what a contest, what acclaim. To understand. The most generous word of all. Memory. To retain, a geyser of felicity. Intelligence. The agonizing poverty of my mind. Words and ideas flitting in and out like butterflies. My brain a dandelion seed blown in the wind."

~*Violette Leduc (French Author)
Excerpt from the book: "La Bâtarde"

A Dandy Poem
“GOLDEN GIRL WITH staying power Lowly weed or eager flower Hands of littles Gather first bouquets Hands of wishers Blow seeds away Hands of gardeners On the battle lines Much malign The dandelion”

by Jeanette Painter
Source

Thoughts On Kindness
"The practice of kindness is the daily, friendly, homely caring form of love. It is both humble-a schoolboy bringing his teacher a bouquet of dandelions-and exalted-a fireman giving his life to save someone else's. Kindness is love with hands and hearts and minds. It is both whimsical-causing our faces to crack into a smile-and deeply touching-causing our eyes to shimmer with tears. And its miraculous nature is such that the more acts of kindness we offer, the more of them we have to give, for acts of kindness are always drawn from the endless well of love."

~*Dawna Markova (American Inspirational speaker and writer)
Excerpt from: "The Fallen Series"

Just Dandelions
"That the sum of a man's life was not where he wound up but in the details that brought him there. That we made mistakes. I closed my eyes, sick of the riddles, and to my surprise all I could see were dandelions-as if they had been painted on the fields of my imagination, a hundred thousand suns. And I remembered something else that makes us human: faith, the only weapon in our arsenal to battle doubt."

~*Jodi Picoult (American Writer)

The Demigod Files
"I am Persephone" she said, her voice thin and papery. "Welcome, demigods. Nico squashed a pomegranate under his boot. "Welcome? After last time, you've got the nerve to welcome me?" I shifted uneasily, because talking that way to a god can get you blasted into dust bunnies. "Um, Nico-" "It's all right," Persephone said coldly. "We had a little family spat." "Family spat?" Nico cried. "You turned me into a dandelion!"

~*Rick Riordan (American Author)
Excerpt from: "The Demigod Files"

Little Dandy Flower
Brave Little dandelion,
Downy yellow face,
Springing up amidst the grass
Heeding not the April winds
Blowing fierce and cold--
Nrave little dandelion
With a heart of gold.

The Primary Plan Book, Volume 3 By Marian Minnie George

Poetic News Snippet About Dandelions
From being a child's diversion and a newspaper jest, the American dandelion has become the leading issue in the door yard and the most obvious plant feature in Nebraska landscapes.

The First Dandelion - Walt Whitman
Simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerging, As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,..

Picking Dandelions
"My father announced early on that he didn't want his sons to be "country club bums." And for a number of reasons, I bore the brunt of that - I have an older brother and two younger brothers. So he had me work in all my spare time. I started out picking dandelions, shoveling stalls, milking cows, building a fence - whatever dirty job was out there. That's a big deal, because you learn things working that you don't learn in school."

~*Charles Koch (American businessman, political donor and philanthropist)

Little Dandelion Soldiers - Hilda Conkling
O LITTLE soldier with the golden helmet, What are you guarding on my lawn? ...

Dandelion Prose, Poetic Verse & Passages

Dandelion Folklore

False Dandelions

Dandelion Factoids