The speaker in “I Will Ask” imagines gathering wildflowers, blossoms, and seeding grasses to offer their color and scent to someone dear. He names them tenderly—primrose, violet, anemone, hawthorn, celandine, thyme—and says he will ask them to hold their sweetness longer for this person’s sake. The gesture feels intimate and full of affection: he wants the natural world to seem to welcome the beloved, as if waving and blooming just for her.
But the final stanza shifts. The speaker admits that these plants would keep their whole sweetness even if no human being had ever woken in Eden to notice them. That quiet recognition doesn’t undo the loving offer; it adds a humbling, slightly wistful note. The mood is lush and tender, yet clear-eyed about nature’s independence from human joy.