Buy my English posies!
                     You that scorn the May,
                 Won’t you greet a friend from home
                     Half the world away?
                 Green against the draggled drift,
                     Faint and frail and first—
                 Buy my Northern blood-root
                     And I’ll know where you were nursed:
Robin down the logging-road whistles, “Come to me!”
Spring has found the maple-grove, the sap is running free;
All the winds of Canada call the ploughing-rain.
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

                 Buy my English posies!
                     Here’s to match your need—
                 Buy a tuft of royal heath,
                     Buy a bunch of weed
                 White as sand of Muysenberg
                     Spun before the gale—
                 Buy my heath and lilies
                     And I’ll tell you whence you hail!
Under hot Constantia broad the vineyards lie—
Throned and thorned the aching berg props the speckless sky—
Slow below the Wynberg firs trails the tilted wain—
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

                 Buy my English posies!
                     You that will not turn—
                 Buy my hot-wood clematis,
                     Buy a frond o’ fern
                 Gathered where the Erskine leaps
                     Down the road to Lorne—
                 Buy my Christmas creeper
                     And I’ll say where you were born!
West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin—
They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn—
Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main—
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

                 Buy my English posies!
                     Here’s your choice unsold!
                 Buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom,
                     Buy the kowhai’s gold
                 Flung for gift on Taupo’s face,
                     Sign that spring is come—
                 Buy my clinging myrtle
                     And I’ll give you back your home!
Broom behind the windy town; pollen o’ the pine—
Bell-bird in the leafy deep where the ratas twine—
Fern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plain—
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

                 Buy my English posies!
                     Ye that have your own
                 Buy them for a brother’s sake
                     Overseas, alone.
                 Weed ye trample underfoot
                     Floods his heart abrim—
                 Bird ye never heeded,
                     Oh, she calls his dead to him!
Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas;
Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these!
Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land—
Masters of the Seven Seas, oh, love and understand.