Chapter III (2)

By this the boy that by her side lay killed
Was melted into vapour from her sight,
And in his blood that on the ground lay spilled,
A purple flower sprang up, checquered with white,
Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.

She bows her head, the new sprung flower to smell,
Comparing it to her Adonis' breath,
And says, within her bosom it shall dwell
Since he himself is reft from her by death;
She crops the stalk, and in the branch appears
Green dropping sap which she compares to tears.

The reader may like to contrast this account of the change from human into floral beauty with the version of the same story in Ovid as translated by Eusden.

Then on the blood sweet nectar she bestows,
The scented blood in little bubbles rose;
Little as rainy drops, which fluttering fly,
Borne by the winds, along a lowering sky,
Short time ensued, till where the blood was shed,
A flower began to rear its purple head

Such, as on Punic apples is revealed
Or in the filmy rind but half concealed,
Still here the fate of lonely forms we see,
_So sudden fades the sweet Anemone_.
The feeble stems to stormy blasts a prey
Their sickly beauties droop, and pine away
The winds forbid the flowers to flourish long
Which owe to winds their names in Grecian song.

The concluding couplet alludes to the Grecian name of the flower ([Greek: anemos], _anemos_, the wind.)

It is said of the Anemone that it never opens its lips until Zephyr kisses them. Sir William Jones alludes to its short-lived beauty.

Youth, like a thin anemone, displays
His silken leaf, and in a morn decays.

Horace Smith speaks of

The coy anemone that ne'er discloses
Her lips until they're blown on by the wind

Plants open out their leaves to breathe the air just as eagerly as they throw down their roots to suck up the moisture of the earth. Dr. Linley, indeed says, "they feed more by their leaves than their roots." I lately met with a curious illustration of the fact that plants draw a larger proportion of their nourishment from light and air than is commonly supposed. I had a beautiful convolvulus growing upon a trellis work in an upper verandah with a south-western aspect. The root of the plant was in pots. The convolvulus growing too luxuriantly and encroaching too much upon the space devoted to a creeper of another kind, I separated its upper branches from the root and left them to die. The leaves began to fade the second day and most of them were quite dead the third or fourth day, but two or three of the smallest retained a sickly life for some days more. The buds or rather chalices outlived the leaves. The chalices continued to expand every morning, for--I am afraid to say how long a time--it might seem perfectly incredible. The convolvulus is a plant of a rather delicate character and I was perfectly astonished at its tenacity of life in this case. I should mention that this happened in the rainy season and that the upper part of the creeper was partially protected from the sun.

The Anemone seems to have been a great favorite with Mrs. Hemans. She thus addresses it.

Flower! The laurel still may shed
Brightness round the victor's head,
And the rose in beauty's hair
Still its festal glory wear;
And the willow-leaves droop o'er
Brows which love sustains no more
But by living rays refined,
Thou the trembler of the wind,
Thou, the spiritual flower
Sentient of each breeze and shower,[067]
Thou, rejoicing in the skies
And transpierced with all their dyes;
Breathing-vase with light o'erflowing,
Gem-like to thy centre flowing,
Thou the Poet's type shall be
Flower of soul, Anemone!

The common anemone was known to the ancients but the finest kind was introduced into France from the East Indies, by Monsieur Bachelier, an eminent Florist. He seems to have been a person of a truly selfish disposition, for he refused to share the possession of his floral treasure with any of his countrymen. For ten years the new anemone from the East was to be seen no where in Europe but in Monsieur Bachelier's parterre. At last a counsellor of the French Parliament disgusted with the florist's selfishness, artfully contrived when visiting the garden to drop his robe upon the flower in such a manner as to sweep off some of the seeds. The servant, who was in his master's secret, caught up the robe and carried it away. The trick succeeded; and the counsellor shared the spoils with all his friends through whose agency the plant was multiplied in all parts of Europe.

THE OLIVE.

The OLIVE is generally regarded as an emblem of peace, and should have none but pleasant associations connected with it, but Ovid alludes to a wild species of this tree into which a rude and licentious fellow was converted as a punishment for "banishing the fair," with indecent words and gestures. The poet tells us of a secluded grotto surrounded by trembling reeds once frequented by the wood-nymphs of the sylvan race:--

Till Appulus with a dishonest air
And gross behaviour, banished thence the fair.
The bold buffoon, whene'er they tread the green,
Their motion mimics, but with jest obscene;
Loose language oft he utters; but ere long
A bark in filmy net-work binds his tongue;
Thus changed, a base wild olive he remains;
The shrub the coarseness of the clown retains.

_Garth's Ovid_.

The mural of this is excellent. The sentiment reminds me of the Earl of Roscommon's well-known couplet in his _Essay on Translated Verse_, a poem now rarely read.

Immodest words admit of no defense,[068]
For want of decency is want of sense,

THE HYACINTH.

The HYACINTH has always been a great favorite with the poets, ancient and modern. Homer mentions the Hyacinth as forming a portion of the materials of the couch of Jove and Juno.

Thick new-born Violets a soft carpet spread,
And clustering Lotos swelled the rising bed,
And sudden _Hyacinths_[069] the turf bestrow,
And flaming Crocus made the mountains glow

_Iliad, Book 14_

Milton gives a similar couch to Adam and Eve.

Flowers were the couch
Pansies, and Violets, and Asphodel
And _Hyacinth_, earth's freshest, softest lap

With the exception of the lotus (so common in Hindustan,) all these flowers, thus celebrated by the greatest of Grecian poets, and represented as fit luxuries for the gods, are at the command of the poorest peasant in England. The common Hyacinth is known to the unlearned as the Harebell, so called from the bell shape of its flowers and from its growing so abundantly in thickets frequented by hares. Shakespeare, as we have seen, calls it the _Blue_-bell.

The curling flowers of the Hyacinth, have suggested to our poets the idea of clusters of curling tresses of hair.

His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule, and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung,
Clustering

_Milton_

The youths whose locks divinely spreading
Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue

_Collins_

Sir William Jones describes--

The fragrant hyacinths of Azza's hair,
That wanton with the laughing summer air.

A similar allusion may also be found in prose.

"It was the exquisitely fair queen Helen, whose jacinth[070] hair, curled by nature, intercurled by art, like a brook through golden sands, had a rope of fair pearl, which, now hidden by the hair, did, as it were play at fast and loose each with the other, mutually giving and receiving richness."--_Sir Philip Sidney_

"The ringlets so elegantly disposed round the fair countenances of these fair Chiotes [071] are such as Milton describes by 'hyacinthine locks' crisped and curled like the blossoms of that flower"

_Dallaway_

The old fable about Hyacinthus is soon told. Apollo loved the youth and not only instructed him in literature and the arts, but shared in his pastimes. The divine teacher was one day playing with his pupil at quoits. Some say that Zephyr (Ovid says it was Boreas) jealous of the god's influence over young Hyacinthus, wafted the ponderous iron ring from its right course and caused it to pitch upon the poor boy's head. He fell to the ground a bleeding corpse. Apollo bade the scarlet hyacinth spring from the blood and impressed upon its leaves the words _Ai Ai_, (_alas! alas!_) the Greek funeral lamentation. Milton alludes to the flower in _Lycidas_,

Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.

Drummond had before spoken of

That sweet flower that bears
In sanguine spots the tenor of our woes

Hurdis speaks of:

The melancholy Hyacinth, that weeps
All night, and never lifts an eye all day.

Ovid, after giving the old fable of Hyacinthus, tells us that "the time shall come when a most valiant hero shall add his name to this flower." "He alludes," says Mr. Riley, "to Ajax, from whose blood when he slew himself, a similar flower[072] was said to have arisen with the letters _Ai Ai_ on its leaves, expressive either of grief or denoting the first two letters of his name [Greek: Aias]."

As poets feigned from Ajax's streaming blood
Arose, with grief inscribed, a mournful flower.

_Young_.

Keats has the following allusion to the old story of Hyacinthus,

Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent
On either side; pitying the sad death
Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath
Of Zephyr slew him,--Zephyr penitent,
Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament
Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.

_Endymion_.

Our English Hyacinth, it is said, is not entitled to its legendary honors. The words _Non Scriptus_ were applied to this plant by Dodonaeus, because it had not the _Ai Ai_ upon its petals. Professor Martyn says that the flower called _Lilium Martagon_ or the _Scarlet Turk's Cap_ is the plant alluded to by the ancients.

Alphonse Karr, the eloquent French writer, whose "_Tour Round my Garden_" I recommend to the perusal of all who can sympathize with reflections and emotions suggested by natural objects, has the following interesting anecdote illustrative of the force of a floral association:--

"I had in a solitary corner of my garden _three hyacinths_ which my father had planted and which death did not allow him to see bloom. Every year the period of their flowering was for me a solemnity, a funeral and religious festival, it was a melancholy remembrance which revived and reblossomed every year and exhaled certain thoughts with its perfume. The roots are dead now and nothing lives of this dear association but in my own heart. But what a dear yet sad privilege man possesses above all created beings, while thus enabled by memory and thought to follow those whom he loved to the tomb and there shut up the living with the dead. What a melancholy privilege, and yet is there one amongst us who would lose it? Who is he who would willingly forget all"

Wordsworth, suddenly stopping before a little bunch of harebells, which along with some parsley fern, grew out of a wall, he exclaimed, 'How perfectly beautiful that is!

Would that the little flowers that grow could live
Conscious of half the pleasure that they give

The Hyacinth has been cultivated with great care and success in Holland, where from two to three hundred pounds have been given for a single bulb. A florist at Haarlem enumerates 800 kinds of double-flowered Hyacinths, besides about 400 varieties of the single kind. It is said that there are altogether upwards of 2000 varieties of the Hyacinth.

The English are particularly fond of the Hyacinth. It is a domestic flower--a sort of parlour pet. When in "close city pent" they transfer the bulbs to glass vases (Hyacinth glasses) filled with water, and place them in their windows in the winter.

An annual solemnity, called Hyacinthia, was held in Laconia in honor of Hyacinthus and Apollo. It lasted three days. So eagerly was this festival honored, that the soldiers of Laconia even when they had taken the field against an enemy would return home to celebrate it.

THE NARCISSUS

Foolish Narcisse, that likes the watery shore

_Spenser_

With respect to the NARCISSUS, whose name in the floral vocabulary is the synonyme of _egotism_, there is a story that must be familiar enough to most of my readers. Narcissus was a beautiful youth. Teresias, the Soothsayer, foretold that he should enjoy felicity until he beheld his own face but that the first sight of that would be fatal to him. Every kind of mirror was kept carefully out of his way. Echo was enamoured of him, but he slighted her love, and she pined and withered away until she had nothing left her but her voice, and even that could only repeat the last syllables of other people's sentences. He at last saw his own image reflected in a fountain, and taking it for that of another, he fell passionately in love with it. He attempted to embrace it. On seeing the fruitlessness of all his efforts, he killed himself in despair. When the nymphs raised a funeral pile to burn his body, they found nothing but a flower. That flower (into which he had been changed) still bears his name.

Here is a little passage about the fable, from the _Two Noble Kinsmen_ of Beaumont and Fletcher.

_Emilia_--This garden hath a world of pleasure in it,
What flower is this?

_Servant_--'Tis called Narcissus, Madam.

_Em._--That was a fair boy certain, but a fool
To love himself, were there not maids,
Or are they all hard hearted?

_Ser_--That could not be to one so fair.

Ben Jonson touches the true moral of the fable very forcibly.

'Tis now the known disease
That beauty hath, to hear too deep a sense
Of her own self conceived excellence
Oh! had'st thou known the worth of Heaven's rich gift,
Thou would'st have turned it to a truer use,
And not (with starved and covetous ignorance)
Pined in continual eyeing that bright gem
The glance whereof to others had been more
Than to thy famished mind the wide world's store.

Gay's version of the fable is as follows:

Here young Narcissus o'er the fountain stood
And viewed his image in the crystal flood
The crystal flood reflects his lovely charms
And the pleased image strives to meet his arms.
No nymph his inexperienced breast subdued,
Echo in vain the flying boy pursued
Himself alone, the foolish youth admires
And with fond look the smiling shade desires,
O'er the smooth lake with fruitless tears he grieves,
His spreading fingers shoot in verdant leaves,
Through his pale veins green sap now gently flows,
And in a short lived flower his beauty glows

Addison has given a full translation of the story of Narcissus from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book the third.

The common daffodil of our English fields is of the genus Narcissus. "Pray," said some one to Pope, "what is this _Asphodel_ of Homer?" "Why, I believe," said Pope "if one was to say the truth, 'twas nothing else but that poor yellow flower that grows about our orchards, and, if so, the verse might be thus translated in English

--The stern Achilles
Stalked through a mead of daffodillies"

THE LAUREL

Daphne was a beautiful nymph beloved by that very amorous gentleman, Apollo. The love was not reciprocal. She endeavored to escape his godship's importunities by flight. Apollo overtook her. She at that instant solicited aid from heaven, and was at once turned into a laurel. Apollo gathered a wreath from the tree and placing it on his own immortal brows, decreed that from that hour the laurel should be sacred to his divinity.

THE SUN-FLOWER

Who can unpitying see the flowery race
Shed by the morn then newflushed bloom resign,
Before the parching beam? So fade the fair,
When fever revels in their azure veins
But one, _the lofty follower of the sun_,
Sad when he sits shuts up her yellow leaves,
Drooping all night, and when he warm return,
Points her enamoured bosom to his ray

_Thomson_.

THE SUN-FLOWER (_Helianthus_) was once the fair nymph Clytia. Broken-hearted at the falsehood of her lover, Apollo, (who has so many similar sins to answer for) she pined away and died. When it was too late Apollo's heart relented, and in honor of true affection he changed poor Clytia into a _Sun-flower_.[073] It is sometimes called _Tourne-sol_--a word that signifies turning to the sun. Thomas Moore helps to keep the old story in remembrance by the concluding couplet of one of his sweetest ballads.

Oh! the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to its close
As the sun flower turns on her god when he sets
The same look that she turned when he rose

But Moore has here poetized a vulgar error. Most plants naturally turn towards the light, but the sun-flower (in spite of its name) is perhaps less apt to turn itself towards Apollo than the majority of other flowers for it has a stiff stem and a number of heavy heads. At all events it does not change its attitude in the course of the day. The flower-disk that faces the morning sun has it back to it in the evening.

Gerard calls the sun-flower "The Flower of the Sun or the Marigold of Peru". Speaking of it in the year 1596 he tells us that he had some in his own garden in Holborn that had grown to the height of fourteen feet.

THE WALL-FLOWER

The weed is green, when grey the wall,
And blossoms rise where turrets fall

Herrick gives us a pretty version of the story of the WALL-FLOWER, (_cheiranthus cheiri_)("the yellow wall-flower stained with iron brown")

Why this flower is now called so
List sweet maids and you shall know
Understand this firstling was
Once a brisk and bonny lass
Kept as close as Danae was
Who a sprightly springal loved,
And to have it fully proved,
Up she got upon a wall
Tempting down to slide withal,
But the silken twist untied,
So she fell, and bruised and died
Love in pity of the deed
And her loving, luckless speed,
Turned her to the plant we call
Now, 'The Flower of the Wall'

The wall-flower is the emblem of fidelity in misfortune, because it attaches itself to fallen towers and gives a grace to ruin. David Moir (the Delta of _Blackwood's Magazine_) has a poem on this flower. I must give one stanza of it.

In the season of the tulip cup
When blossoms clothe the trees,
How sweet to throw the lattice up
And scent thee on the breeze;
The butterfly is then abroad,
The bee is on the wing,
And on the hawthorn by the road
The linnets sit and sing.

Lord Bacon observes that wall-flowers are very delightful when set under the parlour window or a lower chamber window. They are delightful, I think, any where.

THE JESSAMINE.

The Jessamine, with which the Queen of flowers,
To charm her god[074] adorns his favorite bowers,
Which brides, by the plain hand of neatness dressed--
Unenvied rivals!--wear upon their breast;
Sweet as the incense of the morn, and chaste
As the pure zone which circles Dian's waist.

_Churchill._

The elegant and fragrant JESSAMINE, or Jasmine, (_Jasmimum Officinale_) with its "bright profusion of scattered stars," is said to have passed from East to West. It was originally a native of Hindustan, but it is now to be found in every clime, and is a favorite in all. There are many varieties of it in Europe. In Italy it is woven into bridal wreaths and is used on all festive occasions. There is a proverbial saying there, that she who is worthy of being decorated with jessamine is rich enough for any husband. Its first introduction into that sunny land is thus told. A certain Duke of Tuscany, the first possessor of a plant of this tribe, wished to preserve it as an unique, and forbade his gardener to give away a single sprig of it. But the gardener was a more faithful lover than servant and was more willing to please a young mistress than an old master. He presented the young girl with a branch of jessamine on her birth-day. She planted it in the ground; it took root, and grew and blossomed. She multiplied the plant by cuttings, and by the sale of these realized a little fortune, which her lover received as her marriage dowry.

In England the bride wears a coronet of intermingled orange blossom and jessamine. Orange flowers indicate chastity, and the jessamine, elegance and grace.

THE ROSE.

For here the rose expands
Her paradise of leaves.

_Southey._

The ROSE, (_Rosa_) the Queen of Flowers, was given by Cupid to Harpocrates, the God of Silence, as a bribe, to prevent him from betraying the amours of Venus. A rose suspended from the ceiling intimates that all is strictly confidential that passes under it. Hence the phrase--_under the Rose_[075].

The rose was raised by Flora from the remains of a favorite nymph. Venus and the Graces assisted in the transformation of the nymph into a flower. Bacchus supplied streams of nectar to its root, and Vertumnus showered his choicest perfumes on its head.

The loves of the Nightingale and the Rose have been celebrated by the Muses of many lands. An Eastern poet says "You may place a hundred handfuls of fragrant herbs and flowers before the Nightingale; yet he wishes not, in his constant heart, for more than the sweet breath of his beloved Rose."

The Turks say that the rose owes its origin to a drop of perspiration that fell from the person of their prophet Mahommed.

The classical legend runs that the rose was at first of a pure white, but a rose-thorn piercing the foot of Venus when she was hastening to protect Adonis from the rage of Mars, her blood dyed the flower. Spenser alludes to this legend:

White as the native rose, before the change
Which Venus' blood did on her leaves impress.

_Spenser_.

Milton says that in Paradise were,

Flowers of all hue, and _without thorns the rose_.

According to Zoroaster there was no thorn on the rose until Ahriman (the Evil One) entered the world.

Here is Dr. Hooker's account of the origin of the red rose.

To sinless Eve's admiring sight
The rose expanded snowy white,
When in the ecstacy of bliss
She gave the modest flower a kiss,
And instantaneous, lo! it drew
From her red lip its blushing hue;
While from her breath it sweetness found,
And spread new fragrance all around.

This reminds me of a passage in Mrs. Barrett Browning's _Drama of Exile_ in which she makes Eve say--

--For was I not
At that last sunset seen in Paradise,
When all the westering clouds flashed out in throngs
Of sudden angel-faces, face by face,
All hushed and solemn, as a thought of God
Held them suspended,--was I not, that hour
The lady of the world, princess of life,
Mistress of feast and favour? _Could I touch
A Rose with my white hand, but it became
Redder at once?_

Another poet. (Mr. C. Cooke) tells us that a species of red rose with all her blushing honors full upon her, taking pity on a very pale maiden, changed complexions with the invalid and became herself as white as snow.

Byron expressed a wish that all woman-kind had but one _rosy_ mouth, that he might kiss all woman-kind at once. This, as some one has rightly observed, is better than Caligula's wish that all mankind had but one head that he might cut it off at a single blow.

Leigh Hunt has a pleasant line about the rose:

And what a red mouth hath the rose, the woman of the flowers!

In the Malay language the same word signifies _flowers_ and _women_.

Human beauty and the rose are ever suggesting images of each other to the imagination of the poets. Shakespeare has a beautiful description of the two little princes sleeping together in the Tower of London.

Their lips were four red roses on a stalk
That in their summer beauty kissed each other.

William Browne (our Devonshire Pastoral Poet) has a _rosy_ description of a kiss:--

To her Amyntas
Came and saluted; never man before
More blest, nor like this kiss hath been another
But when two dangling cherries kist each other;
Nor ever beauties, like, met at such closes,
But in the kisses of two damask roses.

Here is something in the same spirit from Crashaw.

So have I seen
Two silken sister-flowers consult and lay
Their bashful cheeks together; newly they
Peeped from their buds, showed like the garden's eyes
Scarce waked, like was the crimson of their joys,
Like were the tears they wept, so like that one
Seemed but the other's kind reflection.

Loudon says that there is a rose called the _York and Lancaster_ which when, it comes true has one half of the flower red and the other half white. It was named in commemoration of the two houses at the marriage of Henry VII. of Lancaster with Elizabeth of York.

Anacreon devotes one of his longest and best odes to the laudation of the Rose. Such innumerable translations have been made of it that it is now too well known for quotation in this place. Thomas Moore in his version of the ode gives in a foot-note the following translation of a fragment of the Lesbian poetess.

If Jove would give the leafy bowers
A queen for all their world of flowers
The Rose would be the choice of Jove,
And blush the queen of every grove
Sweetest child of weeping morning,
Gem the vest of earth adorning,
Eye of gardens, light of lawns,
Nursling of soft summer dawns
June's own earliest sigh it breathes,
Beauty's brow with lustre wreathes,
And to young Zephyr's warm caresses
Spreads abroad its verdant tresses,
Till blushing with the wanton's play
Its cheeks wear e'en a redder ray.

From the idea of excellence attached to this Queen of Flowers arose, as Thomas Moore observes, the pretty proverbial expression used by Aristophanes--_you have spoken roses_, a phrase adds the English poet, somewhat similar to the _dire des fleurettes_ of the French.

The Festival of the Rose is still kept up in many villages of France and Switzerland. On a certain day of every year the young unmarried women assemble and undergo a solemn trial before competent judges, the most virtuous and industrious girl obtains a crown of roses. In the valley of Engandine, in Switzerland, a man accused of a crime but proved to be not guilty, is publicly presented by a young maiden with a white rose called the Rose of Innocence.

Of the truly elegant Moss Rose I need say nothing myself; it has been so amply honored by far happier pens than mine. Here is a very ingenious and graceful story of its origin. The lines are from the German.

THE MOSS ROSE

The Angel of the Flowers one day,
Beneath a rose tree sleeping lay,
The spirit to whom charge is given
To bathe young buds in dews of heaven,
Awaking from his light repose
The Angel whispered to the Rose
"O fondest object of my care
Still fairest found where all is fair,
For the sweet shade thou givest to me
Ask what thou wilt 'tis granted thee"
"Then" said the Rose, "with deepened glow
On me another grace bestow."
The spirit paused in silent thought
What grace was there the flower had not?
'Twas but a moment--o'er the rose
A veil of moss the Angel throws,
And robed in Nature's simple weed,
Could there a flower that rose exceed?

Madame de Genlis tells us that during her first visit to England she saw a moss-rose for the first time in her life, and that when she took it back to Paris it gave great delight to her fellow-citizens, who said it was the first that had ever been seen in that city. Madame de Latour says that Madame de Genlis was mistaken, for the moss-rose came originally from Provence and had been known to the French for ages.

The French are said to have cultivated the Rose with extraordinary care and success. It was the favorite flower of the Empress Josephine, who caused her own name to be traced in the parterres at Malmaison with a plantation of the rarest roses. In the royal rosary at Versailles there are standards eighteen feet high grafted with twenty different varieties of the rose.

With the Romans it was no metaphor but an allusion to a literal fact when they talked of sleeping upon beds of roses. Cicero in his third oration against Verres, when charging the proconsul with luxurious habits, stated that he had made the tour of Sicily seated upon roses. And Seneca says, of course jestingly, that a Sybarite of the name of Smyrndiride was unable to sleep if one of the rose-petals on his bed happened to be curled! At a feast which Cleopatra gave to Marc Antony the floor of the hall was covered with fresh roses to the depth of eighteen inches. At a fete given by Nero at Baiae the sum of four millions of sesterces or about 20,000_l_. was incurred for roses. The Natives of India are fond of the rose, and are lavish in their expenditure at great festivals, but I suppose that no millionaire amongst them ever spent such an amount of money as this upon flowers alone.[076]

I shall close the poetical quotations on the Rose with one of Shakespeare's sonnets.

O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses;
But for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet Roses do not so;
Of then sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth.

There are many hundred acres of rose trees at Ghazeepore which are cultivated for distillation, and making "attar." There are large fields of roses in England also, for the manufacture of rose-water.

There is a story about the origin of attar of Roses. The Princess Nourmahal caused a large tank, on which she used to be rowed about with the great Mogul, to be filled with rose-water. The heat of the sun separating the water from the essential oil of the rose, the latter was observed to be floating on the surface. The discovery was immediately turned to good account. At Ghazeepoor, the _essence_, _atta_ or _uttar_ or _otto_, or whatever it should be called, is obtained with great simplicity and ease. After the rose water is prepared it is put into large open vessels which are left out at night. Early in the morning the oil that floats upon the surface is skimmed off, or sucked up with fine dry cotton wool, put into bottles, and carefully sealed. Bishop Heber says that to produce one rupee's weight of atta 200,000 well grown roses are required, and that a rupee's weight sells from 80 to 100 rupees. The atta sold in Calcutta is commonly adulterated with the oil of sandal wood.

LINNAEA BOREALIS

The LINNAEA BOREALIS, or two horned Linnaea, though a simple Lapland flower, is interesting to all botanists from its association with the name of the Swedish Sage. It has pretty little bells and is very fragrant. It is a wild, unobtrusive plant and is very averse to the trim lawn and the gay flower-border. This little woodland beauty pines away under too much notice. She prefers neglect, and would rather waste her sweetness on the desert air, than be introduced into the fashionable lists of Florist's flowers. She shrinks from exposure to the sun. A gentleman after walking with Linnaeus on the shores of the lake near Charlottendal on a lovely evening, writes thus "I gathered a small flower and asked if it was the _Linnaea borealis_. 'Nay,' said the philosopher, 'she lives not here, but in the middle of our largest woods. She clings with her little arms to the moss, and seems to resist very gently if you force her from it. She has a complexion like a milkmaid, and ah! she is very, very sweet and agreeable!"

THE FORGET-ME-NOT

The dear little FORGET-ME-NOT, (_myosotis palustris_)[077] with its eye of blue, is said to have derived its touching appellation from a sentimental German story. Two lovers were walking on the bank of a rapid stream. The lady beheld the flower growing on a little island, and expressed a passionate desire to possess it. He gallantly plunged into the stream and obtained the flower, but exhausted by the force of the tide, he had only sufficient strength left as he neared the shore to fling the flower at the fair one's feet, and exclaim "_Forget-me-not!_" (_Vergiss-mein-nicht_.) He was then carried away by the stream, out of her sight for ever.

THE PERIWINKLE.

The PERIWINKLE (_vinca_ or _pervinca_) has had its due share of poetical distinction. In France the common people call it the Witch's violet. It seems to have suggested to Wordsworth an idea of the consciousness of flowers.

Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower,
The Periwinkle trailed its wreaths,
_And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes._

Mr. J.L. Merritt, has some complimentary lines on this flower.

The Periwinkle with its fan-like leaves
All nicely levelled, is a lovely flower
Whose dark wreath, myrtle like, young Flora weaves;
There's none more rare
Nor aught more meet to deck a fairy's bower
Or grace her hair.

The little blue Periwinkle is rendered especially interesting to the admirers of the genius of Rousseau by an anecdote that records his emotion on meeting it in one of his botanical excursions. He had seen it thirty years before in company with Madame de Warens. On meeting its sweet face again, after so long and eventful an interim, he fell upon his knees, crying out--_Ah! voila de la pervanche!_ "It struck him," says Hazlitt, "as the same little identical flower that he remembered so well; and thirty years of sorrow and bitter regret were effaced from his memory."

The Periwinkle was once supposed to be a cure for many diseases. Lord Bacon says that in his time people afflicted with cramp wore bands of green periwinkle tied about their limbs. It had also its supposed moral influences. According to Culpepper the leaves of the flower if eaten by man and wife together would revive between them a lost affection.

THE BASIL.

Sweet marjoram, with her like, _sweet basil_, rare for smell.

_Drayton._

The BASIL is a plant rendered poetical by the genius which has handled it. Boccaccio and Keats have made the name of the _sweet basil_ sound pleasantly in the ears of many people who know nothing of botany. A species of this plant (known in Europe under the botanical name of _Ocymum villosum_, and in India as the _Toolsee_) is held sacred by the Hindus. Toolsee was a disciple of Vishnu. Desiring to be his wife she excited the jealousy of Lukshmee by whom she was transformed into the herb named after her.[078]

THE TULIP.

Tulips, like the ruddy evening streaked.

_Southey_.

The TULIP (_tulipa_) is the glory of the garden, as far as color without fragrance can confer such distinction. Some suppose it to be 'The Lily of the Field' alluded to in the Sermon on the Mount. It grows wild in Syria.

The name of the tulip is said to be of Turkish origin. It was called Tulipa from its resemblance to the tulipan or turban.

What crouds the rich Divan to-day
With turbaned heads, of every hue
Bowing before that veiled and awful face
Like Tulip-beds of different shapes and dyes,
Bending beneath the invisible west wind's sighs?

_Moore_.

The reader has probably heard of the Tulipomania once carried to so great an excess in Holland.

With all his phlegm, it broke a Dutchman's heart,
At a vast price, with one loved root to part.

_Crabbe_.

About the middle of the 17th century the city of Haarlem realized in three years ten millions sterling by the sale of tulips. A single tulip (the _Semper Augustus_) was sold for one thousand pounds. Twelve acres of land were given for a single root and engagements to the amount of L5,000 were made for a first-class tulip when the mania was at its height. A gentleman, who possessed a tulip of great value, hearing that some one was in possession of a second root of the same kind, eagerly secured it at a most extravagant price. The moment he got possession of it, he crushed it under his foot. "Now," he exclaimed, "my tulip is unique!"

A Dutch Merchant gave a sailor a herring for his breakfast. Jack seeing on the Merchant's counter what he supposed to be a heap of onions, took up a handful of them and ate them with his fish. The supposed onions were tulip bulbs of such value that they would have paid the cost of a thousand Royal feasts.[079]

The tulip mania never leached so extravagant a height in England as in Holland, but our country did not quite escape the contagion, and even so late as the year 1836 at the sale of Mr. Clarke's tulips at Croydon, seventy two pounds were given for a single bulb of the _Fanny Kemble_; and a Florist in Chelsea in the same year, priced a bulb in his catalogue at 200 guineas.

The Tulip is not endeared to us by many poetical associations. We have read, however, one pretty and romantic tale about it. A poor old woman who lived amongst the wild hills of Dartmoor, in Devonshire, possessed a beautiful bed of Tulips, the pride of her small garden. One fine moonlight night her attention was arrested by the sweet music which seemed to issue from a thousand Liliputian choristers. She found that the sounds proceeded from her many colored bells of Tulips. After watching the flowers intently she perceived that they were not swayed to and fro by the wind, but by innumerable little beings that were climbing on the stems and leaves. They were pixies. Each held in its arms an elfin baby tinier than itself. She saw the babies laid in the bells of the plant, which were thus used as cradles, and the music was formed of many lullabies. When the babies were asleep the pixies or fairies left them, and gamboled on the neighbouring sward on which the old lady discovered the day after, several new green rings,--a certain evidence that her fancy had not deceived her! At earliest dawn the fairies had returned to the tulips and taken away their little ones. The good old woman never permitted her tulip bed to be disturbed. She regarded it as holy ground. But when she died, some Utilitarian gardener turned it into a parsley bed! The parsley never flourished. The ground was now cursed. In gratitude to the memory of the benevolent dame who had watched and protected the floral nursery, every month, on the night before the full moon, the fairies scattered flowers on her grave, and raised a sweet musical dirge--heard only by poetic ears--or by maids and children who

Hold each strange tale devoutly true.

For as the poet says:

What though no credit doubting wits may give,
The fair and innocent shall still believe.

Men of genius are often as trustful as maids and children. Collins, himself a lover of the wonderful, thus speaks of Tasso:--

Prevailing poet! whose undoubting mind
Believed the magic wonders that he sung.

All nature indeed is full of mystery to the imaginative.

And visions as poetic eyes avow
Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough.

The Hindoos believe that the Peepul tree of which the foliage trembles like that of the aspen, has a spirit in every leaf.

"Did you ever see a fairy's funeral, Madam?" said Blake, the artist. "Never Sir." "_I_ have," continued that eccentric genius, "One night I was walking alone in my garden. There was great stillness amongst the branches and flowers and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard a low and pleasant sound, and knew not whence it came: at last I perceived _the broad leaf of a flower move_, and underneath I saw a procession of creatures the size and color of green and gray grasshoppers, _bearing a body laid out on a rose leaf_, which they buried with song, and then disappeared."

THE PINK.

The PINK (_dianthus_) is a very elegant flower. I have but a short story about it. The young Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis the Fifteenth, was brought up in the midst of flatterers as fulsome as those rebuked by Canute. The youthful prince was fond of cultivating pinks, and one of his courtiers, by substituting a floral changeling, persuaded him that one of those pinks planted by the royal hand had sprung up into bloom in a single night! One night, being unable to sleep, he wished to rise, but was told that it was midnight; he replied "_Well then, I desire it to be morning_."

The pink is one of the commonest of the flowers in English gardens. It is a great favorite all over Europe. The botanists have enumerated about 400 varieties of it.

THE PANSY OR HEARTS-EASE.

The PANSY (_viola tricolor_) commonly called _Hearts-ease_, or _Love-in-idleness_, or _Herb-Trinity_ (_Flos Trinitarium_), or _Three-faces-under-a-hood_, or _Kit-run-about_, is one of the richest and loveliest of flowers.

The late Mrs. Siddons, the great actress, was so fond of this flower that she thought she could never have enough of it. Besides round beds of it she used it as an edging to all the flower borders in her garden. She liked to plant a favorite flower in large masses of beauty. But such beauty must soon fatigue the eye with its sameness. A round bed of one sort of flowers only is like a nosegay composed of one sort of flowers or of flowers of the same hue. She was also particularly fond of evergreens because they gave her garden a pleasant aspect even in the winter.

"Do you hear him?"--(John Bunyan makes the guide enquire of Christiana while a shepherd boy is singing beside his sheep)--"I will dare to say this boy leads a merrier life, and wears more of the herb called _hearts-ease_ in his bosom, than he that is clothed in silk and purple."

Shakespeare has connected this flower with a compliment to the maiden Queen of England.

That very time I saw (but thou couldst not)
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all armed, a certain aim he took
At a fair Vestal, throned by the west;
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts.
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon--
And the imperial votaress passed on
In maiden meditation fancy free,
Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell.
It fell upon _a little western flowers,
Before milk white, now purple with love's wound--
And maidens call it_ LOVE IN IDLENESS
Fetch me that flower, the herb I showed thee once,
The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid,
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
Fetch me this herb and be thou here again,
Ere the leviathan can swim a league.

_Midsummer Night's Dream._

The hearts-ease has been cultivated with great care and success by some of the most zealous flower-fanciers amongst our countrymen in India. But it is a delicate plant in this clime, and requires most assiduous attention, and a close study of its habits. It always withers here under ordinary hands.

THE MIGNONETTE.

The MIGNONETTE, (_reseda odorato_,) the Frenchman's _little darling_, was not introduced into England until the middle of the 17th century. The Mignonette or Sweet Reseda was once supposed capable of assuaging pain, and of ridding men of many of the ills that flesh is heir to. It was applied with an incantation. This flower has found a place in the armorial bearings of an illustrious family of Saxony. I must tell the story: The Count of Walsthim loved the fair and sprightly Amelia de Nordbourg. She was a spoilt child and a coquette. She had an humble companion whose christian name was Charlotte. One evening at a party, all the ladies were called upon to choose a flower each, and the gentlemen were to make verses on the selections. Amelia fixed upon the flaunting rose, Charlotte the modest mignonette. In the course of the evening Amelia coquetted so desperately with a dashing Colonel that the Count could not suppress his vexation. On this he wrote a verse for the Rose:

Elle ne vit qu'un jour, et ne plait qu'un moment.
(She lives but for a day and pleases but for a moment)

He then presented the following line on the Mignonette to the gentle Charlotte:

"Ses qualities surpassent ses charmes."

The Count transferred his affections to Charlotte, and when he married her, added a branch of the Sweet Reseda to the ancient arms of his family, with the motto of

Your qualities surpass your charms.

VERVAIN.

The vervain--
That hind'reth witches of their will.

_Drayton_

VERVAIN (_verbena_) was called by the Greeks _the sacred herb_. It was used to brush their altars. It was supposed to keep off evil spirits. It was also used in the religious ceremonies of the Druids and is still held sacred by the Persian Magi. The latter lay branches of it on the altar of the sun.

The ancients had their _Verbenalia_ when the temples were strewed with vervain, and no incantation or lustration was deemed perfect without the aid of this plant. It was supposed to cure the bite of a serpent or a mad dog.

THE DAISY.

The DAISY or day's eye (_bellis perennis_) has been the darling of the British poets from Chaucer to Shelley. It is not, however, the darling of poets only, but of princes and peasants. And it is not man's favorite only, but, as Wordsworth says, Nature's favorite also. Yet it is "the simplest flower that blows." Its seed is broadcast on the land. It is the most familiar of flowers. It sprinkles every field and lane in the country with its little mimic stars. Wordsworth pays it a beautiful compliment in saying that

Oft alone in nooks remote
_We meet it like a pleasant thought
When such is wanted._

But though this poet dearly loved the daisy, in some moods of mind he seems to have loved the little celandine (common pilewort) even better. He has addressed two poems to this humble little flower. One begins with the following stanza.

Pansies, Lilies, Kingcups, Daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there's a sun that sets
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are Violets,
They will have a place in story:
There's a flower that shall be mine,
'Tis the little Celandine.

No flower is too lowly for the affections of Wordsworth. Hazlitt says, "the daisy looks up to Wordsworth with sparkling eye as an old acquaintance; a withered thorn is weighed down with a heap of recollections; and even the lichens on the rocks have a life and being in his thoughts."

The Lesser Celandine, is an inodorous plant, but as Wordsworth possessed not the sense of smell, to him a deficiency of fragrance in a flower formed no objection to it. Miss Martineau alludes to a newspaper report that on one occasion the poet suddenly found himself capable of enjoying the fragrance of a flower, and gave way to an emotion of tumultuous rapture. But I have seen this contradicted. Miss Martineau herself has generally no sense of smell, but we have her own testimony to the fact that a brief enjoyment of the faculty once actually occurred to her. In her case there was a simultaneous awakening of two dormant faculties--the sense of smell and the sense of taste. Once and once only, she enjoyed the scent of a bottle of Eau de Cologne and the taste of meat. The two senses died away again almost in their birth.

Shelley calls Daisies "those pearled Arcturi of the earth"--"the constellated flower that never sets."

The Father of English poets does high honor to this star of the meadow in the "Prologue to the Legend of Goode Women."

He tells us that in the merry month of May he was wont to quit even his beloved books to look upon the fresh morning daisy.

Of all the floures in the mede
Then love I most these floures white and red,
Such that men callen Daisies in our town,
To them I have so great affection.
As I sayd erst, when comen is the Maie,
That in my bedde there dawneth me no daie
That I nam up and walking in the mede
To see this floure agenst the Sunne sprede,
When it up riseth early by the morrow
That blisfull sight softeneth all my sorrow.

_Chaucer_.

The poet then goes on with his hearty laudation of this lilliputian luminary of the fields, and hesitates not to describe it as "of all floures the floure." The famous Scottish Peasant loved it just as truly, and did it equal honor. Who that has once read, can ever forget his harmonious and pathetic address to a mountain daisy on turning it up with the plough? I must give the poem a place here, though it must be familiar to every reader. But we can read it again and again, just as we can look day after day with undiminished interest upon the flower that it commemorates.

Mrs. Stowe (the American writer) observes that "the daisy with its wide plaited ruff and yellow centre is not our (that is, an American's) flower. The English flower is the

Wee, modest, crimson tipped flower

which Burns celebrated. It is what we (in America) raise in green-houses and call the Mountain Daisy. Its effect, growing profusely about fields and grass-plats, is very beautiful."

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY.

ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH IN APRIL, 1786

Wee, modest, crimson tipped flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour,
For I maun[080] crush amang the stoure[081]
Thy slender stem,
To spare thee now is past my pow'r,
Thou bonnie gem.

Alas! its no thy neobor sweet,
The bonnie lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet[082]
Wi' speckled breast,
When upward springing, blythe, to greet
The purpling east

Cauld blew the bitter biting north
Upon thy early, humble, birth,
Yet cheerfully thou glinted[083] forth
Amid the storm,
Scarce reared above the patient earth
Thy tender form

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,
High sheltering woods and wa's[084] maun shield,
But thou beneath the random bield[085]
O' clod or stane,
Adorns the histie[086] stibble field[087]
Unseen, alane.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawye bosom sun ward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise,
But now the share up tears thy bed,
And low thou lies!

Such is the fate of artless Maid,
Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betrayed,
And guileless trust,
Till she, like thee, all soiled is laid
Low i' the dust.

Such is the fate of simple Bard,
On Life's rough ocean luckless starred!
Unskilful he to note the card
Of prudent lore,
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard
And whelm him o'er!

Such fate to suffering worth is given
Who long with wants and woes has striven
By human pride or cunning driven
To misery's brink,
Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven,
He, ruined, sink!

Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate,
That fate is thine--no distant date;
Stern Ruin's plough-share drives elate,
Full on thy bloom;
Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight
Shall be thy doom.

_Burns._

The following verses though they make no pretension to the strength and pathos of the poem by the great Scottish Peasant, have a grace and simplicity of their own, for which they have long been deservedly popular.

A FIELD FLOWER.

ON FINDING ONE IN FULL BLOOM, ON CHRISTMAS DAY, 1803.

There is a flower, a little flower,
With silver crest and golden eye,
That welcomes every changing hour,
And weathers every sky.

The prouder beauties of the field
In gay but quick succession shine,
Race after race their honours yield,
They flourish and decline.

But this small flower, to Nature dear,
While moons and stars their courses run,
Wreathes the whole circle of the year,
Companion of the sun.

It smiles upon the lap of May,
To sultry August spreads its charms,
Lights pale October on his way,
And twines December's arms.

The purple heath and golden broom,
On moory mountains catch the gale,
O'er lawns the lily sheds perfume,
The violet in the vale.

But this bold floweret climbs the hill,
Hides in the forest, haunts the glen,
Plays on the margin of the rill,
Peeps round the fox's den.

Within the garden's cultured round
It shares the sweet carnation's bed;
And blooms on consecrated ground
In honour of the dead.