Chapter VII: Part TWO: The Flowers of Shakespeare (1)

Spring

"THE SWEET O' THE YEAR"

I

_Primroses, Cowslips, and Oxlips_

PRIMROSE (_Primula vulgaris_). English poets have always regarded the primrose as the first flower of spring--the true _Flor di prima vera_. This name calls to mind Botticelli's enchanting _Primevera_ that hangs in the Uffizi, in which the sward is dotted with spring flowers that seem to have burst into blossom beneath the footsteps of Venus and her three Graces--those lovely ladies of the Italian Renaissance, clad in light, fluttering draperies. This decorative picture expresses not only the joy and beauty of newly-awakened spring, but something much deeper, something that the painter did not realize himself; and this was what the Italian Renaissance was destined to mean to all the world: a New Birth of beauty in the arts and a new era of human sympathy for mankind.

Sandro Botticelli, whom we may appropriately call _Flor di prima vera_ among painters, was as unaware of his mission in art as the primroses that come into being at the call of a new day of spring sunshine from a long dark winter's sleep in a soil of frozen stiffness. Something of the tender and wistful beauty of early spring--her faint dreams and soft twilights, her languid afternoons and her veiled nights, when pale stars tremble through gray mists and when warm rains softly kiss the drowsy earth--Botticelli has put into his enchanting spring idyl; and this same wistful, half-drowsy, and evanescent beauty is characteristic of the primrose.

Primrose, first born child of Ver,
Merry Springtime's harbinger,
With her bells dim

is a perfect and sympathetic description of the flower in "The Two Noble Kinsmen."[20]

[20] Act I, Scene I.

Observe that the bells of the primrose are "dim"--pale in hue--because the earth is not sufficiently awake for bright colors or for joyful chimes--so the color is faint and the sound is delicate. Trees are now timidly putting forth tender leaves, buds peer cautiously from the soil, and few birds sing; for leaves, buds, and birds know full well that winter is lurking in the distance and that rough winds occasionally issue from the bag of Boreas. The time has not yet come for "lisp of leaves and ripple of rain" and for choirs of feathered songsters. Yet all the more, because of its bold daring and its modest demeanor, the primrose deserves the enthusiastic welcome it has always received from poets and flower lovers.

"The primrose," writes Dr. Forbes Watson, "seems the very flower of delicacy and refinement; not that it shrinks from our notice, for few plants are more easily seen, coming as it does when there is a dearth of flowers, when the first birds are singing and the first bees humming and the earliest green putting forth in the March and April woods. And it is one of those plants which dislikes to be looking cheerless, but keeps up a smouldering fire of blossom from the very opening of the year, if the weather will permit.

"The flower is of a most unusual color, a pale, delicate yellow, slightly tinged with green. And the better flowers impress us by a peculiar paleness, not dependent upon any feebleness of hue, which we always find unpleasing, but rather upon the _exquisite_ _softness of their tone_. And we must not overlook the little round stigma, that green and translucent gem, which forms the pupil of the eye, and is surrounded by a deeper circle of orange which helps it to shine forth more clearly. Many flowers have a somewhat pensive look; but in the pensiveness of the primrose there is a shade of melancholy--a melancholy which awakens no thought of sadness and does but give interest to the pale, sweet, inquiring faces which the plant upturns towards us.

"In the primrose, as a whole, we cannot help being struck by an exceeding softness and delicacy; there is nothing sharp, strong, or incisive; the smell is 'the faintest and most ethereal perfume,' as Mrs. Stowe has called it in her 'Sunny Memories,' though she was mistaken in saying that it disappears when we pluck the flower. It is meant to impress us as altogether soft and yielding. One of the most beautiful points in the primrose is the manner in which _the paleness of the flowers is taken up by the herbage_. This paleness seems to hang about the plant like a mystery, for though the leaves of the primrose may at times show a trace of the steady paleness of the cowslip, it is more usually confined to their undersurfaces and the white flower-stalks with their clothing of down. And when we are looking at the primrose one or other of these downy, changeful portions is continually coming into view, so that we get a feeling as if there hung about the whole plant a clothing of soft, evanescent mist, thickening about the center of the plant and the undersurfaces of the leaves which are less exposed to the sun. And then we reach one of the main expressions of the primrose. When we look at the pale, sweet flowers, and the soft-toned green of the herbage, softened further here and there by that uncertain mist of down, the dryness of the leaf and fur enters forcibly into our impression of the plant, giving a sense of extreme delicacy and need of shelter, as if it were some gentle creature which shrinks from exposure to the weather."

The Greeks associated the idea of melancholy with this flower. They had a story of a handsome youth, son of Flora and Priapus, whose betrothed bride died. His grief was so excessive that he died, too, and the gods than changed his body into a primrose.

In Shakespeare's time, the primrose was also associated with early death; and it is one of the flowers thrown upon the corse of _Fidele_, whose lovely, wistful face is compared to the "pale primrose." Thus _Arviragus_ exclaims as he gazes on the beautiful youth, _Fidele_, the assumed name of _Imogen_ in disguise:

I'll sweeten thy sad grave: thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose.[21]

_Perdita_, in "The Winter's Tale,"[22] mentions

Pale primroses that die unmarried
Ere they can behold bright Phœbus in his strength.

Shakespeare appreciated the delicate hue and perfume of this flower. He seems to be alluding to both qualities when he makes _Hermia_ touch _Helena's_ memory by the following words:

And in the wood, where often you and I
Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie.[23]

Other English poets speak of the flower as "the pale," or "the dim." Milton writes:

Now the bright star, day's harbinger
Comes dancing from the East and leads with her
The flow'ry May, who, from her green lap, throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.

And again, Thomas Carew:

Ask me why I send you here
The firstling of the infant year?
Ask me why I send to you
This Primrose, all bepearled with dew?
I straight whisper in your ears:
The sweets of Love are wash'd with tears

Ask me why this flower doth show
So yellow, green and sickly, too?
Ask me why the stalk is weak
And, bending, yet it doth not break?
I will answer: these discover
What doubts and fears are in a lover.

[21] "Cymbeline"; Act IV, Scene II.

[22] Act IV, Scene III.

[23] "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act I, Scene I.

The English primrose is one of a large family of more than fifty species, represented by the primrose, the cowslip, and the oxlip. All members of this family are noted for their simple beauty and their peculiar charm.

Parkinson writes:

"We have so great variety of Primroses and Cowslips in our country breeding that strangers, being much delighted with them, have often furnished into divers countries to their good content.

"All Primroses bear their long and large, broad yellowish-green leaves without stalks most usually, and all the Cowslips have small stalks under the leaves, which are smaller and of a darker green. The name of _Primula veris_, or Primrose, is indifferently conferred on those that I distinguish for _Paralyses_, or Cowslips. All these plants are called most usually in Latin _Primulæ veris_, _Primulæ pretenses_ and _Primulæ silvarum_, because they shew by their flowering the new Spring to be coming on, they being, as it were, the first Embassadors thereof. They have also divers other names, as _Herba Paralysis_, _Arthritica_, _Herba Sancti Petri_, _Claues Sancti Petri_, _Verbasculum odoratum_, _Lunaria arthritica_, _Phlomis_, _Alisma silvarum_ and _Alismatis alterum genus_. Some have distinguished them by calling the Cowslips _Primula Veris Elatior_, that is the Taller Primrose, and the other _Humilis_, Low, or Dwarf, Primrose.

"Primroses and Cowslips are in a manner wholly used in Cephalicall diseases to ease pains in the head. They are profitable both for the Palsy and pains of the joints, even as the Bears' Ears[24] are, which hath caused the names of _Arthritica Paralysis_ and _Paralytica_ to be given them."

[24] Auriculas.

Tusser in his "Husbandry" includes the primrose among the seeds and herbs of the kitchen; and Lyte says that "the cowslips, primroses and oxlips are now used daily amongst other pot-herbs, but in physic there is no great account made of them." "The old name was Primerolles," Dr. Prior notes in his quaint book on flowers. "Primerole as an outlandish, unintelligible word was soon familiarized into Primerolles and this into Primrose." The name was also written primrolles and finally settled down into primrose. Chaucer wrote primerole, a name derived from the French _Primeverole_, meaning, like the Italian _Flor di prima vera_, the first spring flower.

COWSLIP (_Paralysis vulgaris pratensis_). The cowslip is an ingratiating little flower, not so aloof as its cousin the primrose, and not at all melancholy. In the popular lore of Shakespeare's time the cowslip was associated with fairies. In many places it was known as "fairy cups." For this reason Shakespeare makes _Ariel_ lie in a cowslip's bell when the fay is frightened by the hooting of owls, or tired of swinging merrily in "the blossom that hangs on the bough." One of the duties of _Titania's_ little maid of honor was "to hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear"; and this gay little fairy informs _Puck_ of the important place cowslips hold in the court of the tiny _Queen Titania_:

The cowslips tall her pensioners be,
In their gold coats spots you see:
These be rubies, fairy favors,
In these freckles live their savors.[25]

[25] "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act II, Scene I.

To appreciate the meaning of this comparison, it must be remembered that the "pensioners" of Queen Elizabeth's court were a guard of the tallest and handsomest men to be found in the whole kingdom, men, moreover, who were in the pride of youth, and scions of the most distinguished families. Their dress was of extraordinary elegance and enriched heavily with gold embroidery. Hence, "gold coats" for the cowslips. Here and there jewels sparkled and glistened on the pensioners' coats. Hence rubies--fairy favors--favors from the Queen! The pensioners also wore pearls in their ears, like Raleigh and Leicester and other noblemen. Hence the fairy had to "hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear." An idea, too, of the size of _Titania_ and her elves is given when the cowslips are considered "tall," and tall enough to be the body-guard of _Queen Titania_. This was a pretty little allusion to Queen Elizabeth and her court, which the audience that gathered to see the first representation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" did not fail to catch.

We get a sidelight on the importance of the pensioners in "The Merry Wives of Windsor"[26] when _Dame Quickly_ tells _Falstaff_ a great cock-and-bull story about the visitors who have called on _Mistress_ _Ford_. "There have been knights and lords and gentlemen with their coaches, letter after letter, gift after gift; smelling so sweetly (all musk) and so rushling, I warrant you in silk and gold; and yet there has been earls, and, what is more, _pensioners_!" Shakespeare also speaks of "the freckled cowslip" in "Henry V,"[27] when the _Duke of Burgundy_ refers to

The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip.

All poets love the flower.

In the language wherewith spring
Letters cowslips on the hill,

writes Tennyson--a charming fancy!

Sydney Dobell has a quaint flower song containing this verse:

Then came the cowslip
Like a dancer in the fair,
She spread her little mat of green
And on it dancèd she,
With a fillet bound about her brow,
A fillet round her happy brow,
A golden fillet round her brow,
And rubies in her hair.

[26] Act II, Scene II.

[27] Act V, Scene II.

Never mind if country dancers rarely wear rubies; the idea is pretty and on Shakespeare's authority we know that rubies do gleam in the cup of the cowslip, as he has told us through the lips of the fairy.

With great appreciation of the beauty of the flower he has _Jachimo's_ description:

Cinque-spotted like the crimson drops
In the bottom of a cowslip.[28]

[28] "Cymbeline"; Act II, Scene II.

Most sympathetically did Dr. Forbes Watson, when lying on a bed of fatal illness, put into words what many persons have felt regarding this flower:

"Few of our wild flowers give intenser pleasure than the cowslip, yet perhaps there is scarcely any whose peculiar beauty depends so much upon locality and surroundings. There is a homely simplicity about the cowslip, much like that of the daisy, though more pensive,--the quiet, sober look of an unpretending country girl, not strikingly beautiful in feature or attire, but clean and fresh as if new bathed in milk and carrying us away to thoughts of daisies, flocks and pasturage and the manners of a simple, primitive time, some golden age of shepherd-life long since gone by. And more; in looking at the cowslip we are always most forcibly struck by its apparent wholesomeness and health. This wholesomeness is quite unmistakable. It belongs even to the smell so widely different from the often oppressive perfume of other plants, as lilies, narcissuses, or violets. Now just such a healthy milk-fed look, just such a sweet, healthy odor is what we find in cows--an odor which breathes around them as they sit at rest in the pasture. The 'lips,' of course, is but a general resemblance to the shape of the petals and suggests the source of the fragrance. The cowslip, as we have said, is a singularly healthy-looking plant, indeed, nothing about it is more remarkable. It has none of the delicacy and timidity of the primrose. All its characters are well and healthily pronounced. The paleness is uniform, steady, and rather impresses us as whiteness; and the yellow of the cup is as rich as gold. The odor is not faint, but saccharine and luscious. It does not shrink into the sheltered covert, but courts the free air and sunshine of the open fields; and instead of its flowers peeping timidly from behind surrounding leaves, it raises them boldly on a stout, sufficient stalk, the most conspicuous object in the meadow. Its poetry is the poetry of common life, but of the most delicious common life that can exist. The plant is in some respects careless to the verge of disorder; and you should note that carelessness well, till you feel the force of it, as especially in the lame imperfection of the flower buds, only, perhaps half of them well developed and the rest dangling all of unequal lengths. Essentially the cowslip and the primrose are only the same plant in two different forms, the one being convertible into the other. The primrose is the cowslip of the woods and sheltered lanes; the cowslip is the primrose of the fields."

The name cowslip is not derived from the lips of the cow, but, according to Skeat, the great Anglo-Saxon authority, it comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning dung and was given to the plant because it springs up in meadows where cows are pastured.

"The common field Cowslip," says Parkinson, "I might well forbear to set down, being so plentiful in the fields; but because many take delight in it and plant it in their gardens, I will give you the description of it here. It hath divers green leaves, very like unto the wild Primrose, but shorter, rounder, stiffer, rougher, more crumpled about the edges and of a sadder green color, every one standing upon his stalk which is an inch or two long. Among the leaves rise up divers long stalks, a foot or more high, bearing at the top many fair, yellow, single flowers with spots of a deep yellow at the bottom of each leaf, smelling very sweet.

"In England they have divers names according to several countries, as Primroses, Cowslips, Oxlips, Palsieworts and Petty Mullins. The Frantic Fantastic, or Foolish, Cowslip in some places is called by country people Jack-an-Apes-on-Horseback, which is a usual name given by them to many other plants, as Daisies, Marigolds, etc., if they be strange or fantastical, differing in form from the ordinary kind of the single ones. The smallest are usually called through all the North Country Birds' Eyen, because of the small yellow circle in the bottoms of the flowers resembling the eye of a bird."

OXLIP (_Primula eliator_). The oxlip combines the qualities of primrose and cowslip. "These two plants," writes a botanist, "appear as divergent expressions of a simple type, the cowslip being a contracted form of primrose, the sulphur yellow and the fine tawny, watery rays of the latter brightened into well defined orange spots. In the oxlip these characters anastomose."

Thus, partaking of the character of primrose and cowslip, the oxlip is considered by some authorities a hybrid. "The oxlip and the polyanthus," says Dr. Forbes Watson, "with its tortoiseshell blossoms, are two of the immediate forms; the polyanthus being a great triumph of the gardener's art, a delightful flower, quite a new creation and originally produced by cultivation of the primrose." In England the oxlip is found in woods, fields, meadows, and under hedges. Though a spring flower it lingers into summer and is found in company with the nodding violet, wild thyme, and luscious eglantine on the bank where _Titania_ loved to sleep lulled to rest by song.[29] _Perdita_ speaks of "bold oxlips" ("The Winter's Tale," Act iv, Scene iii); and compared With the primrose and cowslip the flower deserves the adjective.

"Oxlips in their cradles growing," in the song in "The Two Noble Kinsmen,"[30] which Shakespeare wrote with John Fletcher, shows great knowledge of the plant, for the root-leaves of the oxlip are shaped like a cradle.

Parkinson writes: "Those are usually called oxlips whose flowers are naked, or bare, without husks to contain them, being not so sweet as the cowslip, yet have they some little scent, although the Latin name doth make them to have none."

[29] "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act II, Scene II.

[30] Act I, Scene I.

II

"_Daffodils that Come Before the Swallow Dares_"

DAFFODIL (_Narcissus pseudo-narcissus_).

When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! the doxy over the dale,
Why then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.

Is the opening verse that _Autolycus_ sings so gaily in "The Winter's Tale."[31] The daffodil was "carefully nourished up" in Elizabethan gardens, as the saying went. Before Shakespeare's time a great number of daffodils had been introduced into England from various parts of the Continent. Gerard describes twenty-four different species, "all and every one of them in great abundance in our London gardens."

[31] Act IV, Scene II.

There were many varieties both rare and ordinary. Parkinson particularly distinguishes the true daffodils, or _narcissus_, from the "Bastard Daffodils," or _pseudo narcissus_; and he gives their differences as follows:

"It consisteth only in the flower and chiefly in the middle cup, or chalice; for that we do, in a manner only, account those to be _Pseudo Narcissus_, Bastard Daffodils, whose middle cup is altogether as long, and sometimes a little longer than, the outer leaves that do encompass it, so that it seemeth rather like a trunk, or a long nose, than a cup or chalice, such as almost all the _Narcissi_, or true Daffodils, have. Of the Bastard tribe Parkinson gives the great yellow Spanish Daffodil; the Mountain Bastard of divers kinds; the early straw-colored; the great white Spanish; the greatest Spanish white; the two lesser White Spanish; our common English wild Bastard Daffodil; the six-cornered; the great double yellow, or John Tradescant's great Rose Daffodil; Mr. Wilmer's great double Daffodil; the great double yellow Spanish, or Parkinson's Daffodil; the great double French Bastard; the double English Bastard, or Gerard's double Daffodil; the great white Bastard Rush Daffodil, or Junquilia; the greater yellow Junquilia; and many others."

Then he adds:

"The _Pseudo narcissus Angliens vulgaris_ is so common in all England, both in copses, woods and orchards, that I might well forbear the description thereof. It hath three, or four, grayish leaves, long and somewhat narrow, among which riseth up the stalk about a span high, or little higher, bearing at the top, out of a skinny husk (as all other Daffodils have), one flower, somewhat large, having the six leaves that stand like wings, of a pale yellow color, and the long trunk in the middle of a faire yellow with the edges, or brims, a little crumpled, or uneven. After the flower is past, it beareth a round head, seeming three square, containing round black seed."

Shakespeare knew all of these varieties very well and had many of them in mind when he wrote the beautiful lines for _Perdita_, who exclaims:

O Proserpina!
For the flowers now that, frighted, thou lettst fall
From Dis's wagon. Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.[32]

[32] "The Winter's Tale"; Act IV, Scene III.

Much has been written about this description of the daffodils; and it is generally thought that "to take the winds of March with beauty" means to charm, or captivate, the wild winds with their loveliness. I do not agree with this idea, and venture to suggest that as the daffodils sway and swing in the boisterous March winds with such infinite grace and beauty, bending this way and that, they "take the winds with beauty," just as a graceful dancer is said to take the rhythmic steps of the dance with charming manner.

We get a hint for this also in Wordsworth's poem:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of yellow daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky-Way
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of the bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet would not be but gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought

For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant, or in pensive, mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

No one can read this poem without feeling that the dancing daffodils "take the winds of March with beauty." The very name of the daffodil touches our imagination. It carries us to the Elysian Fields, for the ancient Greeks pictured the meads of the blessed as beautifully golden and deliciously fragrant with asphodels. The changes ring through asphodel, affodile, affodyl, finally reaching daffodil. Then there is one more quaint and familiar name and personification,

Daffy-down-dilly that came up to town
In a white petticoat and a green gown.

The idea of daffodil as a rustic maiden was popular in folk-lore and poetry. The feeling is so well expressed in Michael Drayton's sprightly eclogue called "Daffodil" that it forms a natural complement to the happy song of care-free _Autolycus_ just quoted. This Pastoral captured popular fancy; and it is just as fresh and buoyant as it was when it was written three hundred years ago. Two shepherds, _Batte_ and _Gorbo_, meet:

BATTE

Gorbo, as thou camst this way,
By yonder little hill,
Or, as thou through the fields didst stray,
Sawst thou my Daffodil?

She's in a frock of Lincoln green,
Which color likes the sight;
And never hath her beauty seen
But through a veil of white.

GORBO

Thou well describst the daffodil;
It is not full an hour
Since by the spring, near yonder hill,
I saw that lovely flower.

BATTE

Yet my fair flower thou didst not meet,
No news of her didst bring;
And yet my Daffodil's more sweet
Than that by yonder spring.

GORBO

I saw a shepherd that doth keep
In yonder field of lilies
Was making (as he fed his sheep)
A wreath of daffodillies.

BATTE

Yet, Gorbo, thou deludst me still,
My flower thou didst not see;
For know my pretty Daffodil
Is worn of none but me.

To show itself but near her feet
No lily is so bold,
Except to shade her from the heat,
Or keep her from the cold.

GORBO

Through yonder vale as I did pass
Descending from the hill,
I met a smirking bonny lass;
They call her Daffodil,

Whose presence as along she went
The pretty flowers did greet,
As though their heads they downward bent
With homage to her feet,

And all the shepherds that were nigh
From top of every hill
Unto the valleys loud did cry:
There goes sweet Daffodil!

BATTE

Ay, gentle shepherd, now with joy
Thou see my flocks doth fill;
That's she alone, kind shepherd boy,
Let's us to Daffodil!

The flower was also called jonquil, saffron lily, Lent lily and narcissus. It was the large yellow narcissus, known as the Rose of Sharon, so common in Palestine, of which Mohammed said: "He that hath two cakes of bread, let him sell one of them for a flower of the narcissus; for bread is the food of the body, but narcissus is the food of the soul."

Narcissus, the most beautiful youth of Bœotia, was told that he would live happily until he saw his own face. Loved by the nymphs, and particularly Echo, he rejected their advances for he was immune to love and admiration. One day, however, he beheld himself in a stream and became so fascinated with his reflection that he pined to death gazing at his own image.

For him the Naiads and the Dryads mourn,
Whom the sad Echo answers in her turn,
And now the sister nymphs prepare his urn;
When looking for his corpse, they only found
A rising stalk with yellow blossoms crowned.

In the center of the cup are to be found the tears of Narcissus!

Because the flower was consecrated to Ceres and to the Underworld and to the Elysian Fields, the daffodil was one of the flowers that Proserpine was gathering when "dusky Dis" carried her off--and the myth also hints that the Earth purposely brought the asphodel forth from the Underworld to entice the unsuspecting daughter of Ceres. Sophocles associates the daffodil with the garlands of great goddesses: "And ever, day by day, the narcissus with its beauteous clusters, the ancient coronet of the mighty goddesses, bursts into bloom by heaven's dew."[33]

[33] _Œdipus Coloneus._

The delightful Dr. Forbes Watson writes of the daffodil like a painter, with accurate observation and bright palette:

"In the daffodil the leaves and stems are of a full glaucous green, a color not only cool and refreshing in itself, but strongly suggestive of water, the most apparent source of freshness and constituting a most delicious groundwork for the bright, lively yellow of the blossoms. Now what sort of spathe would be likely to contribute best to this remarkable effect of the flower? Should the colors be unusually striking or the size increased, or what? Strange to say, in both Daffodil and Pheasant's Eye (Poet's Narcissus) we find the spathe dry and withered, shrivelled up like a bit of thin brown paper and clinging round the base of the flowers. We cannot overlook it, and most assuredly we were never meant to do so. Nothing could have been more beautifully ordered than this contrast, there being just sufficient to make us appreciate more fully that abounding freshness of life.

"It is a plant which affords a most beautiful contrast, a cool, watery sheet of leaves with bright, warm flowers, yellow and orange, dancing over the leaves like meteors over a marsh. The leaves look full of watery sap, which is the life blood of plants and prime source of all their freshness, just as the tissues of a healthy child look plump and rosy from the warm blood circulating within.

"In its general expression the Poet's Narcissus seems a type of maiden purity and beauty, yet warmed by a love-breathing fragrance; and yet what innocence in the large soft eye which few can rival among the whole tribe of flowers. The narrow, yet vivid fringe of red so clearly seen amidst the whiteness suggests again the idea of purity and gushing passion--purity with a heart which can kindle into fire."

III

"_Daisies Pied and Violets Blue_"

DAISY (_Bellis perennis_). Shakespeare often mentions the daisy. With "violets blue" "lady-smocks all silver-white," and "cuckoo-buds of every hue," it "paints the meadows with delight" in that delightful spring-song in "Love's Labour's Lost."[34] Shakespeare also uses this flower as a beautiful comparison for the delicate hand of _Lucrece_ in "The Rape of Lucrece":[35]

Without the bed her other fair hand was
On the green coverlet; whose perfect white
Showed like an April daisy on the grass.

The daisy is among the flowers in the fantastic garlands that poor _Ophelia_ wove before her death.[36]

[34] Act V, Scene II.

[35] Stanza 57.

[36] "Hamlet"; Act IV, Scene VII.

The botanical name _Bellis_ shows the origin of the flower. Belides, a beautiful Dryad, trying to escape the pursuit of Vertumnus, god of gardens and orchards, prayed to the gods for help; and they changed her into the tiny flower. In allusion to this Rapin wrote:

When the bright Ram, bedecked with stars of gold,
Displays his fleece the Daisy will unfold,
To nymphs a chaplet and to beds a grace,
Who once herself had borne a virgin's face.

The daisy was under the care of Venus. It has been beloved by English poets ever since Chaucer sang the praises of the day's eye--daisy. Chaucer tells us, in what is perhaps the most worshipful poem ever addressed to a flower, that he always rose early and went out to the fields, or meadows, to pay his devotions to this "flower of flowers," whose praises he intended to sing while ever his life lasted, and he bemoaned the fact, moreover, that he had not words at his command to do it proper reverence.

Next to Chaucer in paying homage to the daisy comes Wordsworth with his

A nun demure, of lowly port;
Or sprightly maiden, of Love's court;
In thy simplicity the sport
Of all temptations;
Queen in crown of rubies drest,
A starveling in a scanty vest,
Are all, as seems to suit the best
My appellations.

A little cyclops with one eye
Staring to threaten and defy
That thought comes next--and instantly
The freak is over,
The shape will vanish--and behold,
A silver shield with boss of gold
That spreads itself some fairy bold
In fight to cover.

Bright flower! for by that name at last
When all my reveries are past
I call thee, and to that cleave fast,
Sweet, silent creature
That breathst with me the sun and air,
Do thou as thou art wont repair
My heart with gladness and a share
Of thy meek nature.

"Daisies smell-less yet most quaint" is a line from the flower-song in "The Two Noble Kinsmen," written by John Fletcher and Shakespeare.[37]

[37] Act I, Scene I.

Milton speaks of

Meadows trim with daisies pied

and Dryden pays a tribute to which even Chaucer would approve:

And then a band of flutes began to play,
To which a lady sang a tirelay;
And still at every close she would repeat
The burden of the song--"The Daisy is so sweet!
The Daisy is so sweet!"--when she began
The troops of Knights and dames continued on.

The English daisy is "The wee, modest crimson-tipped flower," as Burns has described it, and must not be confused with the daisy that powders the fields and meadows in our Southern States with a snow of white blossoms supported on tall stems. This daisy, called sometimes the moon-daisy (_Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum_), is known in England as the midsummer daisy and ox-eye. In France it is called marguerite and paquerette. Being a midsummer flower, it is dedicated to St. John the Baptist. It is also associated with St. Margaret and Mary Magdalen, and from the latter it derives the names of maudlin and maudelyne. As _Ophelia_ drowned herself in midsummer the daisies that are described in her wreath are most probably marguerites and not the "day's eye" of Chaucer.

Parkinson does not separate daisies very particularly. "They are usually called in Latin," he tells us, "_Bellides_ and in English Daisies. Some of them _Herba Margarita_ and _Primula veris_, as is likely after the Italian names of Marguerita and _Flor di prima vera gentile_. The French call them _Paquerettes_ and _Marguerites_; and the fruitful sort, or those that have small flowers about the middle one, _Margueritons_. Our English women call them Jack-an-Apes-on-Horseback."

The daisy that an Elizabethan poet quaintly describes as a Tudor princess resembles the midsummer daisy rather than the "wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower" of Burns:

About her neck she wears a rich wrought ruff
With double sets most brave and broad bespread
Resembling lovely lawn, or cambric stuff
Pinned up and prickt upon her yellow head.

Also Browne in his "Pastorals" seems to be thinking of this flower:

The Daisy scattered on each mead and down,
A golden tuft within a silver crown.

VIOLET (_Viola odorata_). The violet was considered "a choice flower of delight" in English gardens. Shakespeare speaks of the violet on many occasions and always with tenderness and deep appreciation of its qualities. Violets are among the flowers that the frightened Proserpine dropped from Pluto's ebon car--

Violets dim
And sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath.[38]

Thus in Shakespeare's opinion the violet out-sweetened both Juno, majestic queen of heaven, and Venus, goddess of love and beauty.

How could he praise the violet more?

To throw a perfume on the violet
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

Shakespeare informs us in "King John."[39] With the utmost delicacy of perfection he describes _Titania's_ favorite haunt as

a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows.[40]

In truth, the tiny flower seems to nod among its leaves.

Shakespeare makes the elegant _Duke_ in "Twelfth Night," who is lounging nonchalantly on his divan, compare the music he hears to the breeze blowing upon a bank of violets[41] (see page 44).

[38] "The Winter's Tale"; Act IV, Scene III.

[39] Act IV, Scene II.

[40] "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act II, Scene II.

[41] Act I, Scene I.

Shelley held the same idea that the delicious perfume of flowers is like the softest melody:

The snowdrop and then the violet
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet;
And there was mixed with fresh color, sent
From the turf like the voice and the instrument.

And the hyacinth, purple and white and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music, so delicate, soft and intense
It was felt like an odor within the sense.

_Ophelia_ laments that she has no violets to give to the court ladies and lords, for "they withered" when her father died, she tells us. Shakespeare also associates violets with melancholy occasions. _Marina_ enters in "Pericles" with a basket of flowers on her arm, saying:[42]

The yellows, blues,
The purple violets and marigolds
Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave
While summer days do last.

[42] Act IV, Scene II.

On another occasion, with a broad sweeping gesture, Shakespeare mentions

The violets that strew
The green lap of the new-come Spring.

In "Sonnet XCIX" he writes:

The forward violet thus did I chide:
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal the sweet that smells
If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.

Bacon deemed it most necessary "to know what flowers and plants do best perfume the air," and he thought "that which above all others yields the sweetest smell is the violet, and next to that the musk-rose." (See page 44.)

"Perhaps of all Warwickshire flowers," writes a native of Shakespeare's country, "none are so plentiful as violets; our own little churchyard of Whitechurch is sheeted with them. They grow in every hedgebank until the whole air is filled with their fragrance. The wastes near Stratford are sometimes purple as far as the eyes can see with the flowers of _viola canina_. Our English violets are twelve in number. The plant is still used in medicine and acquired of late a notoriety as a suggested cancer cure; and in Shakespeare's time was eaten raw with onions and lettuces and also mingled in broth and used to garnish dishes, while crystallized violets are not unknown in the present day."

For the beauty of its form, for the depth and richness of its color, for the graceful drooping of its stalk and the nodding of its head, for its lovely heart-shaped leaf and above all for its delicious perfume, the violet is admired. Then when we gaze into its tiny face and note the delicacy of its veins, which Shakespeare so often mentions, we gain a sense of its deeper beauty and significance.

Dr. Forbes Watson observed:

"I give one instance of Nature's care for the look of the stamens and pistils of a flower. In the blossom of the Scented Violet the stamens form, by their convergence, a little orange beak. At the end of this beak is the summit of the pistil, a tiny speck of green, but barely visible to the naked eye. Yet small as it is, it completes the color of the flower, by softening the orange, and we can distinctly see that if this mere point were removed, there would be imperfection for the want of it."

St. Francis de Sales, a contemporary of Shakespeare, gave a lovely description of the flower when he said:

"A true widow is in the Church as a March Violet, shedding around an exquisite perfume by the fragrance of her devotion and always hidden under the ample leaves of her lowliness and by her subdued coloring, showing the spirit of her mortification. She seeks untrodden and solitary places."

The violet's qualities of lowliness, humility, and sweetness have always appealed to poets. The violet is also beloved because it is one of the earliest spring flowers. Violets are, like primroses and cowslips,

The first to rise
And smile beneath Spring's wakening skies,
The courier of a band of coming flowers.

The violet was also an emblem of constancy. At the floral games, instituted by Clemence Isaure at Toulouse in the Fourteenth Century, the prize was a golden violet, because the poetess had once sent a violet to her Knight as a token of faithfulness. With the Troubadours the violet was a symbol of constancy. In "A Handful of Pleasant Delights," a popular song-book published in Elizabeth's reign in 1566, there is a poem called "A Nosegay always Sweet for Lovers to send Tokens of Love at New Year's tide, or for Fairings, as they in their minds shall be disposed to write." This poem contains a verse to the violet:

Violet is for faithfulness
Which in me shall abide;
Hoping likewise that from your heart
You will not let it slide,

And will continue in the same,
As you have now begun;
And then forever to abide
Then you my heart have won.

The violet has always held a loved place in the English garden. Gerard writes quaintly in his "Herbal":

"The Black, or Purple Violets, or March Violets, of the garden have a great prerogative above all others, not only because the mind conceiveth a certain pleasure and recreation by smelling and handling of those most odoriferous flowers, but also for the very many by these Violets receive ornament and comely grace; for there be made of them garlands for the head, nosegays and poesies, which are delightful to look on and pleasant to smell to, speaking nothing of their appropriate virtues; yea, gardens themselves receive by these the greatest ornament of all chiefest beauty and most gallant grace; and the recreation of the mind, which is taken thereby, cannot but be very good and honest; for they admonish and stir up a man to that which is comely and honest; for flowers through their beauty, variety of color and exquisite form do bring to a liberal and great mind the remembrance of honesty, comeliness and all kinds of virtue."

Proserpine was gathering violets among other flowers in the fields of Enna in Sicily when Pluto carried her off. Shakespeare touched upon the story most exquisitely, through the lips of _Perdita_, as quoted above.

Another Greek myth accounts for the Greek word for the violet, which is _ion_. It seems when, in order to protect her from the persecutions of Juno, Jove transformed lovely Europa into a white heifer whom he named Io, he caused sweet violets to spring up from the earth wherever the white cow placed her lips; and from her name, Io, the flower acquired the name _ion_.

The Athenians adored the flower. Tablets were engraved with the word _ion_ and set up everywhere in Athens; and of all sobriquets the citizens preferred that of "Athenian crowned with violets."

The Persians also loved the violet and made a delicious wine from it. A sherbet flavored with violet blossoms is served in Persia and Arabia to-day at feasts; and Mohammedans say: "The excellence of the violet is as the excellence of El Islam above all other religions."

IV

_"Lady-smocks all Silver White" and "Cuckoo Buds
of Yellow Hue"_

LADY-SMOCK (_Cardamine pratensis_). The lovely little spring song in "Love's Labour's Lost"[43] with the line,

Lady-smocks all silver white,

has immortalized this little flower of the English meadows, but little known in our country. The lady-smock is very common in England in early spring. Properly speaking it should be Our Lady's-smock, as it is one of the many plants dedicated to the Virgin Mary and bearing her name. The list is a long one, including Lady's-slippers, Lady's-bower, Lady's-cushion, Lady's-mantle, Lady's-laces, Lady's-looking-glass, Lady's-garters, Lady's-thimble, Lady's-hair (maidenhair fern), Lady's-seal, Lady's-thistle, Lady's-bedstraw, Lady's-fingers, Lady's-gloves, and so on. These flowers, originally dedicated to Venus, Juno, and Diana in Greek and Roman mythology and to Freya and Bertha in Northern lore and legend, were gradually transferred to the Virgin with the spread of Christianity. The Lady's-smock takes its name from the fancied, but far-fetched, resemblance to a smock. It is said, by way of explanation, that when these flowers are seen in great quantity they suggest the comparison of linen smocks bleaching on the green meadow. Other names for the plant are Cuckoo-flower, Meadow-cress, Spinks, and Mayflower; and in Norfolk the _Cardamine pratensis_ is called Canterbury-bells. The petals have a peculiarly soft and translucent quality with a faint lilac tinge. Shakespeare describes the flower as "silver white," an epithet that has puzzled many persons. However, one ardent Shakespeare lover has made a discovery:

"Gather a lady-smock as you tread the rising grass in fragrant May, and although in individuals the petals are sometimes cream color, as a rule the flower viewed in the hand is lilac--pale, but purely and indisputably lilac. Where then is the silver-whiteness? It is the meadows, remember, that are painted, when, as often happens, the flower is so plentiful as to hide the turf, and most particularly if the ground be a slope and the sun be shining from behind us, all is changed; the flowers are lilac no longer; the meadow is literally 'silver-white.' So it is always--Shakespeare's epithets are like prisms. Let them tremble in the sunshine and we discover that it is he who knows best."

The beautiful song begins:

When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver white,
And cuckoo buds of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he:
Cuckoo,
Cuckoo, Cuckoo--or word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.

[43] Act V, Scene II.

CUCKOO BUDS (_Ranunculus_). It is quite possible that in "cuckoo buds of yellow hue" Shakespeare meant the blossoms of the buttercup or kingcup (called by the country people of Warwickshire horse-blobs). Some authorities claim that cuckoo-buds is intended to represent the lesser celandine, of which Wordsworth was so fond that he wrote three poems to it. Others call cuckoo-buds _carmine pratensis_; but that could hardly be possible because Shakespeare speaks of "lady-smocks all silver white" in one line and "cuckoo buds of yellow hue" in the succeeding line.

There is much confusion in the identification of lady-smocks, cuckoo-buds, cuckoo-flowers, and crow-flowers, for they are more or less related.

Gerard says: "Our Lady-Smock is also called the cuckoo-flower because it flowers in April and May when the cuckoo doth begin to sing her pleasant notes without stammering."

V

_Anemones and "Azured Harebells"_

ANEMONE (_Anemone purpurea striata stellata_). The anemone is described in "Venus and Adonis" very minutely:[44]

By this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd,
Was melted like a vapor from her sight,
And in his blood that on the ground lay spill'd,
A purple flower sprung up chequer'd with white.
Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood,
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.

[44] Verse 195.

Adonis, the beautiful youth, beloved of Venus, was wounded by a boar, to which he had given chase. Venus found him as he lay dying on the grass. To make him immortal she changed him into an anemone, or windflower. Naturally the flower was dedicated to Venus.

Bion sang:

Alas! the Paphian! fair Adonis slain!
Tears plenteous as his blood she pours amain,
But gentle flowers are born and bloom around
From every drop that falls upon the ground.
Where streams his blood, there blushing springs a Rose
And where a tear has dropped a windflower blows.

Pliny asserted the anemone only blooms when the wind blows.

The flower was associated with illness in the days of the Egyptians and also during the Middle Ages, when there was also a superstition that the first anemone gathered would prove a charm against disease. The first spring blossom was, therefore, eagerly searched for, delightedly plucked, and carefully guarded. No token of affection was more prized by a loved one going off on a journey than the gift of an anemone. An old ballad has the lines:

The first Spring-blown Anemone she in his doublet wove,
To keep him safe from pestilence wherever he should rove.

Anemones were greatly valued in Elizabethan gardens. Indeed it was a fad to grow them. Parkinson distinguishes the family of anemones as "the wild and the tame, or manured, both of them nourished up in gardens." He classifies them still further as "those that have broader leaves and those that have thinner, or more jagged, leaves"; and then again into those "that bear single flowers and those that bear double flowers." The wild kinds included "all the Pulsatillas, or Pasque (Easter) flowers." Parkinson mentions many varieties. He describes the "tame" anemones as white, yellow, purple, crimson, scarlet, blush gredeline (between peach color and violet), orange-tawny, apple-blossom, rose-color, and many others. From his list we can have no doubt that Shakespeare's flower was one of the purple star anemones--the _Anemone purpurea striata stellata_, "whose flowers have many white lines and stripes through the leaves." Parkinson's name is "the purple-striped Anemone."

Of recent years anemones have again become the fashion.

"How gorgeous are these flowers to behold," exclaims Ryder Haggard, "with their hues of vivid scarlet and purple! To be really appreciated, however, they should, I think, be seen in their native home, the East. In the neighborhood of Mount Tabor in Palestine, I have met with them in such millions that for miles the whole plain is stained red, blue and white, growing so thickly indeed that to walk across it without setting foot on a flower at every step would be difficult. I believe, and I think that this view is very generally accepted, that these are the same lilies of the field that 'toil not neither do they spin,' which Our Lord used to illustrate His immortal lesson. Truly Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

The Adonis flower (_Flos Adonis_) spoken of by Ben Jonson and others has nothing to do with the anemone. It is a kind of camomile. "Some have taken the red kind to be a kind of Anemone," says Parkinson. "The most usual name now with us is _Flos Adonis_. In English it is also called the Mayweed and Rosarubie and Adonis Flower."

HAREBELL (_Scilla nutans_).[45] The "azured harebell," which Shakespeare uses in "Cymbeline" for comparison with the delicate veins of _Fidele_ (_Imogen_), has been identified as the English jacinth, blue harebell, or hare's-bell. Browne's "Pastorals" show that this flower was only worn by faithful lovers; and, therefore, the flower is most appropriately selected for association with _Imogen_. Browne says:

The Harebell, for her stainless, azured hue
Claims to be worn of none but who are true.

[45] See p. 207.

This flower is also called the "wild hyacinth." Blossoming in May and June, it is one of the precious ornaments of English woods. "Dust of sapphire," its jewel-like flowers have been called.

"Our English jacinth, or harebells," writes Parkinson, "is so common everywhere that it scarce needeth any description. It beareth divers long narrow green leaves, not standing upright, not yet fully lying on the ground, among which springeth up the stalk, bearing at the top many long and hollow flowers, hanging down their heads, all forwards, for the most part, parted at the brims into six parts, turning up their points a little again, of a sweetish, but heady, scent, like unto the Grapeflower. The heads for seed are long and square, wherein is much black seed. The color of the flowers is in some of a deep blue tending to purple, in others of a paler blue, or of a bleak blue tending to an ash color. Some are pure white and some are parti-colored blue and white; and some are of a fine delayed purplish red, or bluish color, which some call a pearl color."

VI

_Columbine and Broom-flower_

COLUMBINE (_Aquilegia vulgaris_). "There's fennel for you, and columbines," says _Ophelia_, as she hands the flowers to the courtiers.[46] Shakespeare also mentions the columbine in "Love's Labour's Lost"[47] where _Don Armado_, the "fantastical Spaniard" (a caricature of a real person at Queen Elizabeth's court), exclaims, "I am that flower," to which _Dumain_ and _Longueville_ reply in derision, "That mint! That columbine!" Of the columbine of Shakespeare's time, Parkinson says:

[46] "Hamlet"; Act IV, Scene V.

[47] Act V, Scene II.

"There be many sorts of Columbines as well differing in form as color of the flowers, and of them, both single and double, carefully nursed up in our gardens for the delight both of their forms and colors. The variety of the colors of these flowers are very much, for some are wholly white, some of a blue, or violet, color, others of a bluish, or flesh, color, or deep, or pale, red, or of a dead purple, or dead murrey color, as Nature listeth to show."

The generic name is derived from the word _aquila_, an eagle, because of the fancied resemblance of some parts of the flower to the talons of an eagle. The English name comes from the Latin _columba_, a dove, from the likeness of its nectaries to the heads of doves in a ring around a dish, or to the figure of a dove hovering with expanded wings discovered by pulling off one petal with its detached sepals. Hence this was called the dove plant. From the belief that it was the favorite plant of the lion it was called _Herba leonis_.

The columbine was valued for many medicinal virtues.

"The scarlet and yellow columbine," writes Matthew, "is one of our most beautiful wild flowers. It is my experience that certain flowers have certain favorite haunts, which are exclusively held by them year after year. This flower is in its prime about the first of June, and is nearly always found beside some lichen-covered rock."

The English and American flowers differ, although the early colonists brought the English flower with them. Grant Allen tells us: