The language of flowers The floral offering ; a token of affection and esteem ; comprising the language and poetry of flowers
Handed from ages down; a nurse’s tale--
Which children, open-eyed and mouthed, devour;
And thus as garrulous ignorance relates,
We learn it and believe.
_Southey._
* * * * *
A fortune-telling host,
As numerous as the stars could boast,
Matrons, who toss the cup, and see
The grounds of fate in grounds of tea.
_Churchill._
* * * * *
Gipsies, who every ill can cure,
Except the ill of being poor,
Who charms ’gainst love and agues sell,
Who can in hen-roost set a spell,
Prepared by arts, to them best known,
To catch all feet except their own,
Who as to fortune can unlock it,
As easily as pick a pocket.
_Churchill._
* * * * *
We may smile, or coldly sneer,
The while such ghostly tales we hear,--
And wonder why they were believed,
And how wise men could be deceived:--
Bathing our renovated sight
In the free gospel’s glorious light,
We marvel it was ever night!
_Mrs. Hale._
* * * * *
This present life seems full of mysteries;
The vulgar mind, to superstition prone,
In nature’s workings fearful omens sees,
And shrinks aghast from terrors of its own
Absurd imagining. Despotic is the power
Of ignorance; and thousands live in fear
And die unnumbered times before the hour
That Heaven has set to end their being here.
The trustful, quiet, mighty thinker seeks
The beautiful and simple orderings
Of the Great Former of created things,
And GOD to him in guiding accents speaks.
Still, in the dealings of the LORD with men,
Some things there are beyond our human ken.
_MacKellar._
* * * * *
Tam saw an unco sight!
Warlocks and witches in a dance;
Nae cotillon brent new frae France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,
Put life an mettle in their heels.
A winnock bunker in the east,
There sat auld Nick, in shape o’ beast;
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge:
He screw’d the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a’ did dirl.--
Coffins stood round like open presses,
That shaw’d the dead in their last dresses;
And by some devilish cantraip slight,
Each in its cauld hand held a light,--
By which heroic Tam was able
To note upon the haly table,
A murderer’s banes in gibbet airns;
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen’d bairns;
A thief, new cutted frae a rape,
Wi’ his last gasp his gab did gape;
Five tomahawks, wi’ bluid red-rusted;
Five scimiters, wi’ murder crusted;
A garter, which a babe had strangled;
A knife, a father’s throat had mangled,
Whom his ain son o’ life bereft,
The gray hairs yet stack to the heft;
Wi’ mair o’ horrible and awfu’,
Which ev’n to name wad be unlawfu’.
_Burns._
VERVAIN.... _Enchantment_.
Vervain was employed by the ancients in various kinds of divinations.
They ascribed to it a thousand properties, and, among others, that of
reconciling enemies. Whenever the Romans sent their heralds to offer
peace or war to nations, one of them always carried a sprig of Vervain.
The Druids, both in Gaul and Britain, regarded the Vervain with the same
veneration as the misletoe, and offered sacrifices to the earth before
they cut this plant in spring, which was a ceremony of great pomp.
Though the Druids and their religion have passed away, the Vervain is
still the plant of spells and enchantment. In the northern provinces of
France, the shepherds gather it with ceremonies and words known only to
themselves, and express its juices under certain phases of the moon.
They insist that this plant enables them to cure their ailments, and to
cast a spell on their daughters and cattle, by which they can make them
conform to their wishes.
* * * * *
I’d wake the spell that sleeps within an herb,
And witch the lady till I know she’s mine.
_Peerbold._
* * * * *
Her overpowering presence made you feel
It would not be idolatry to kneel.
_Byron._
* * * * *
Her sacred beauty hath enchanted heaven,
And, had she lived before the siege of Troy,
Helen, whose beauty summoned Greece to arms,
And drew a thousand ships to Tenedos,
Had not been named in Homer’s Iliad;
Her name had been in every line he wrote.
_Marlowe._
* * * * *
Not all the charms that superstition gave
To plants in lonely forests found,
Could work such magic in Love’s doting slave,
As the voice which his wishes crowned.
_Anon._
* * * * *
A voice of laughter--a voice of glee!
Among the maidens, who happy as she?
By love’s enchantment her thrilling breast
Is wildly, witchingly, over-blest:
And gushing joys, like the sun in May,
Enliven the noon of her bridal-day.
_MacKellar._
* * * * *
Mysterious plant! whose golden tresses wave
With a sad beauty in the dying year,
Blooming amid November’s frost severe,
Like a pale corpse-light o’er the recent grave.
If shepherds tell us true, thy wand hath power,
With gracious influence, to avert the harm
Of ominous planets.
_Token, 1831._
CORN.... _Riches_.
Ceres, the goddess of Corn and harvest, was represented with a garland
of ears of Corn on her head. The commemoration of the loss of her
daughter Proserpine, was celebrated about the beginning of harvest; that
of her search after her, at the time of sowing Corn. A whole straw has
been made the emblem of union; and a broken straw, of rupture. The
custom of breaking a straw, to express the rupture of a contract, may be
traced back to an early period of French history, and may be said to
have had a royal origin. When Charles the Simple, of France, was
abandoned by his principal lords, they broke a straw to express that
they would no longer acknowledge him as their king. Corn may be regarded
as an appropriate emblem of wealth; since, wherever it grows, it leads
us to infer plenty and comfort.
* * * * *
Therefore, if at great things thou wouldst arrive,
Get riches first, get wealth.
_Milton._
* * * * *
Then let us get money, like bees lay up honey;
We’ll build us new hives and store each cell;
The sight of our treasure shall yield us great pleasure,
We’ll count it, and chink it, and jingle it well.
_Dr. Franklin._
* * * * *
Much learning shows how little mortals know;
Much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy:
At best, it babies us with endless toys,
And keeps us children till we drop to dust.
As monkeys at a mirror stand amazed,
They fail to find what they so plainly see;
Thus men, in shining riches, see the face
Of happiness, nor know it as a shade;
But gaze, and touch, and peep, and peep again,
And wish, and wonder it is absent still.
_Young._
* * * * *
Oh, blessed lot
To be possessed of wealth and of a heart
So heavenly made that it refuses not
Of its abundance freely to impart!
_MacKellar._
* * * * *
You are heir
To lordships, mansions, forests, parks, and gems.
You have three mighty manors in Castile;
Two broad estates in Leon; two amidst
The mulberry trees of Murcia, and huge chests
Crammed full of ingots, dug by naked slaves,
Who famished on coarse bread. Besides all these,
There bloom plantations in the East, whose fruits
Are pearls, and spice, and princely diamonds;
And in Brazil, Pactolus floods, ne’er dumb,
Whose waves all talk in gold!
_Barry Cornwall._
CRANBERRY.... _Cure for the Heartache_.
Far away among the hills,
Far from tower and town,
Where wide moors and heaths lie spread,
Desolate and brown.
Where the grouse and plover live
Far from gun and dog,
A delicate and tiny flower
Decks swamp and watery bog.
The Cranberry blossom dwelleth there
Amid the mountains cold,
Seeming like a fairy gift
Left on the dreary wold.
Oh! and ’tis very beautiful,
The flowers are pink and white,
And the small oval polished leaves
Are evergreen and bright.
’Tis such a wee, fair, dainty thing,
You’d think a greenhouse warm
Would be its proper dwelling-place,
Kept close from wind and storm.
But on the moors it dwelleth free,
Like a fearless mountain child;
With a rosy cheek, a lightsome look,
And a spirit strong and wild.
In autumn, all among the swamps
And marshes soft and wet,
Come troops of poor hill-children
The ripened fruit to get.
The bushes all in water grow,
In those small pools, that lie
In scores among the turfy knolls
On mountains broad and high.
And there the peasant children come
To pull the Cranberries red,
Where bold and booted sporting squires
Would scarcely dare to tread.
_They_ only shoot the poor wild birds,
And chase the timid hare,
For their diversion; _they_ can live
In luxury, without care.
But these poor peasant-children’s lot
Is full of human wo,
And hungry, thinly clad, and cold,
They o’er the mountains go;
With feet, that shoes have never known,
And legs all blue and bare,
And yet, so light are they of heart,
You’ll hear them laughing there.
Such laughter makes my very heart
Leap up with joy to hear,
It tells that even poverty
Is not entirely drear.
It telleth--what I ever think,
That GOD is good indeed;
And that he suiteth, in us all,
Our spirit to our need.
Think ye--if these poor peasants were
All discontent and sour--
If they in frowns and murmurings
Spent every wretched hour:--
Like many a cherished, pampered child,
Whom wealth and fondness cloy,
Till e’en the knowledge of a want
Would be a novel joy:--
Think, if these peasants pined like him
For pleasures they have not,
How manifold would then have been
The sorrows of their lot!
But they, unshod, bareheaded too,
Fed sparsely with coarse food,
Go laughing on their gleesome way,
As GOD’S bright creatures should.
They are like flowers, springing up
In some unkindly place,
Yet full of all their colours rare,
Their sweetness and their grace.
They _are_ bright flowers, that spring to cheer
E’en penury’s wilderness,
And often with a swelling heart,
Those human flowers I bless.
Kind blessings on their bold, clear eyes,
And elvish, unbound hair;--
And blessings on their laughter wild,
Mid crags and moorlands bare!
In autumn mornings forth they go
With baskets to the wold,
Some of wicker, some of rush,
Some new, and many old.
And over mountain, over glen,
The merry creatures bound,
On to the wide and boggy heaths,
Where a thousand streamlets sound.
The small bare legs all splash about,
Heeding not cold nor wet,