Inscription surrounded by floral border: Celandine: PD.8-1980.f.53

Materials used in production

Watercolour
Graphite

Components of the work

Support composed of paper
Leaf Height 326 mm Width 255 mm

Techniques used in production

Watercolour : Watercolour over graphite on paper

Inscription or legends present

• Text: 103
• Location: Recto, upper right
• Method of creation: Watercolour

Inscription present: in two vertical columns, broken following the line 'Mantling in the tiny square'

• Text: Pleasures newly found are sweet / When they lie about our feet; / February last, my heart / First at sight of thee was glad; / All unheard of as thou art, / Thou must needs, I think, have had, / Celandine! and long ago / Praise of which I nothing know. / I have not a doubt but he, / Whosoe' er the man might be, / Who the first with pointed rays / (Workman worthy to be sainted) / Set the sign-board in a blaze, / When the rising sun he painted, / Took the fancy from a glance / At thy glittering countenance. / Soon as gentle breezes bring / News of winter's vanishing, / And the children build their bowers / Stciking 'Kerchief-plots of mould / All about with full-blown flowers, / Thick as sheep in shepherd's fold! / With the proudest thou art there, / Mantling in the tiny square. / Often have I sighed to measure / By myself a lonely pleasure, / Sighed to think, I read a book / Only read, perhaps, by me; / Yet I long could overlook / Thy bright coronet and thee, / And thy arch and wily ways, / And thy store of other praise. / Blithe of heart, from week to week / Thou dost play at hide and seek; / While the patient primrose sits / Like a beggar in the cold, / Thou, a flower of wiser wits, slipp'st into thy sheltering hold; / Bright as any of they train/ When ye all are out again. / Thou art not beyond the moon, / But a thing "beneath our shoon;" / Let the bold adventurer thrid / In his bark the polar sea; / Rear who will a pyramid; / Praise it is enough for me, / If there be but three or four / Who will love my little flower. / Wordsworth.
• Location: Recto
• Method of creation: Watercolour

Inscription present: the letter [A] is watercolour of Hawthorn

• Text: [A]h, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely! / Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade / To shepherds looking on their silly sheep, / Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy / To kings that fear their subjects' treachery? / Shakespeare / Henry vi / Marke the faire bloomin of the hawthorn-tree, / Who finely cloathed in a robe of white / Fills full the wanton eye with May's delight.
• Location: Verso
• Method of creation: Watercolour

Identification numbers

Accession number: PD.8-1980.f.53
Primary reference Number: 44208
Stable URI

Audit data

Associated departments & institutions

Owner or interested party: The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department: Paintings, Drawings and Prints