Poem of the week: The Sunflower by Dora Greenwell | poetry

Sunflower

Till the slow daylight pale,
A willing slave, fast bound to one above,
I wait; he seems to speed, and change, and fail;
I know he will not move.

I lift my golden orb
To his, unsmitten when the roses die,
And in my broad and burning disk absorb
The splendors of his eye.

His eye is like a clear
Keen flame that searches through me; I must drop
Upon my stalk, I cannot reach his sphere;
To mine he cannot stop.

I win not my desire,
And yet I fail not of my guerdon, lo!
A thousand flickering darts and tongues of fire
Around me spread and glow;

All striped and crowned, I miss
No queenly state until the summer wane,
The hours flit by; none knoweth of my bliss,
And none has guessed my pain;

I follow one above,
I track the shadow of his steps, I grow
Most like him I love
Of all that shines below.

The English poet Dora Greenwell (1821-1882) is often compared with Christina Rossetti, whose work Greenwell is known to have admired. Both wrote a considerable number of devotional poems and Greenwell’s, at their most accomplished, share something of Rossetti’s restrained intensity.

This week’s poem allegorises the mystical relationship between the worshiper and God, with the sunflower’s resemblance to the sun rhyming with the concept that the Judaeo-Christian God created mankind in his image. The alternating meter (typically, two lines of iambic pentameter framed by two of iambic trimeter) reflects in microcosm the difference of scale between man and God, plant and star.

The sunflower’s resemblance to its sun-god is emphasized at times (“I lift my golden orb / To his”) but the plant, the speaker in the poem, remains “in character”, and a secular reading is always in sight, supported by the long tradition of obsessive love poetry in English. The first stanza even problematises the theological relationship, with the sunflower’s assertion of willing enslavement “to one above” and the initial admission that “he seems to speed and change and fail”. The perception of fallibility is corrected, though, by the sunflower’s knowledge that “he will not move”. The loss of the sun’s presence is like the loss of faith for the worshipper: the latter must be held responsible.

After the disappointments of sunset, an enriching reconnection is gained by the plant from the risen sun in the second stanza. The third, though, returns to the distance between them: “His eye is like a clear / Keen flame that searches through me; I must droop / Upon my stalk, I cannot reach his sphere from him; / To mine he cannot stop.” The eye that “searches through” the flower seems not to be looking for faults, preparing a judgment, but to be engaged in a thorough act of seeing – one that, however, leaves the sunflower abashed, unable to return the eye contact. There’s a clear verbal echo of the secular love poem in the admission, “I win not my desire”, but the rest of the stanza proclaims the otherworldly “guerdon” (reward) achieved instead. It’s expressed in Pentecostal terms, through the imagery of a “thousand flickering darts and tongues of fire”, and the flower’s splendid vision of itself, “all rayed and crowned”.

The sunflower sees her own external transformations and losses in relation to how closely she reflects the image of the sun. The closeness ultimately achieved is reflected in the shortened third line of the last stanza: “I grow / Most like to him I love / Of all that shines below.” This would be a conceited statement for a human worshiper – but it suits the sunflower, imagined as an obsessive lover whose entire self has been subsumed in the object of devotion.