At first glance, John Clare’s “The Fear of Flowers” seems to be about plants, but it really paints a portrait of personality. The speaker watches several wildflowers and sees them almost like people with distinct temperaments. The oxeye, woodbine, and dogrose are all nervous—they duck from the wind, tremble at the thought of boys picking them, and can’t even use their thorns to fight back. Then the thistle arrives, and the mood completely changes. It wears its purple bloom like a warhorse wearing a plume, openly defying danger by the roadside. It thrives where other, meeker weeds get trampled and never get a chance to set seed. By the final line, the thistle is called “the very wasp of flowers,” a creature that stings and demands respect. There’s almost a grudging admiration in the speaker’s voice, and the poem leaves you feeling the tension between timidity and fierce, unapologetic survival.
The Fear of Flowers — Summary
The nodding oxeye bends before the wind, The woodbine quakes lest boys their flowers should find, And prickly dogrose spite of its array Can't dare the blossom-seeking hand away, While thistles wear their heavy knobs of bloom Proud as a warhorse wears its haughty plume, And by the roadside danger's self defy; On commons where pined sheep and oxen lie In ruddy pomp and ever thronging mood It stands and spreads like danger in a wood, And in the village street where meanest weeds Can't stand untouched to fill their husks with seeds, The haughty thistle oer all danger towers, In every place the very wasp of flowers.