The Cloud Baskets

Clouds that hide the sun with showers
Are wet baskets full of flowers.
One is packed with poppies bright,
One with lillies inward white.
One, that takes a day to pass,
Bulges out with blades of grass.
One’s a mass of roses red;
One, a crowded pansy-bed.
Yonder cloud, so sullen dull,
Of golden buttercups is full.
Its neighbor cloud, an ashen gray,
Glows within with daisies gay.
Not a cloud whose rain we rue
But is crammed with flowers too.
So I know the darkest cloud,
Creeping gloomy as a shroud,
Brings to me, all unconfessed,
Just the flowers I love the best.