The language of flowers The floral offering ; a token of affection and esteem ; comprising the language and poetry of flowers
* * * * *
The maid whose manners are retired,
Who, patient, waits to be admired,
Though overlooked, perhaps, a while
Her modest worth, her modest smile,--
Oh, she will find, or soon, or late,
A noble, fond, and faithful mate,
Who, when the spring of life is gone,
And all its blooming flowers are flown,
Will bless old Time, who left behind
The graces of a virtuous mind.
_Paulding._
* * * * *
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.
Eyes of some men travel far
For the finding of a star;
Up and down the heavens they go,
Men that keep a mighty rout!
I’m as great as they, I trow,
Since the day I found thee out,
Little flower!--I’ll make a stir,
Like a great astronomer.
Modest, yet withal an elf,
Bold, and lavish of thyself,
Since we needs must first have met
I have seen thee, high and low,
Thirty years or more, and yet
’Twas a face I did not know:
Thou hast now, go where I may,
Fifty greetings in a day.
Ere a leaf is on the bush,
In the time before the thrush
Has a thought about its nest,
Thou wilt come with half a call,
Spreading out thy glossy breast
Like a careless prodigal;
Telling tales about the sun,
When there’s little warmth or none.
_Wordsworth._
* * * * *
Shakspeare regarded the Violet as the emblem of constancy, as the
following occurs in one of his sonnets:--
Violet is for faithfulness,
Which in me shall abide;
Hoping, likewise, that from your heart
You will not let it slide.
_Shakspeare._
* * * * *
The Violet in her greenwood bower,
Where birchen boughs with hazles mingle,
May boast herself the fairest flower,
In glen, or copse, or forest dingle.
_Scott._
* * * * *
Under the hedge all safe and warm,
Sheltered from boisterous wind and storm,
We Violets lie:
With each small eye
Closely shut while the cold goes by.
You look at the bank, mid the biting frost,
And you sigh, and say that we’re dead and lost;
But, Lady stay
For a sunny day,
And you’ll find us again, alive and gay.
On mossy banks, under forest trees,
You’ll find us crowding, in days like these;
Purple and blue,
And white ones too,
Peep at the sun, and wait for you.
By maids and matrons, by old and young,
By rich and poor, our praise is sung;
And the blind man sighs
When his sightless eyes
He turns to the spot where our perfumes rise.
There is not a garden, the country through,
Where they plant not Violets, white and blue;
By princely hall,
And cottage small--
For we’re sought, and cherished, and culled by all.
Yet grand parterres and stiff trimmed beds
But ill become our modest heads;
We’d rather run,
In shadow and sun,
O’er the banks where our merry lives first begun.
There, where the Birken bough’s silvery shine
Gleams over the hawthorn and frail woodbine,
Moss, deep and green,
Lies thick, between
The plots where we Violet-flowers are seen.
And the small gay Celandine’s stars of gold
Rise sparkling beside our purple’s fold:--
Such a regal show
Is rare, I trow,
Save on the banks where Violets grow.
_Louisa A. Twamley._
* * * * *
I know where bloom some Violets in a bed
Half hidden in the grass; and crowds go by
And see them not, unless some curious eye
Unto their hiding-place by chance is led.
I often pass that way, and look on them,
And love them more and more. I know not why
My heart doth love such humble things; but I
Esteem them more than robe or diadem
Of haughty kings. A babe, or bird, or flower
Hath o’er the soul a most despotic power.
The tearful eye of infancy oppressed--
A flower down-trodden by the foot of spite--
Awaken sighs of sorrow in the breast,
Or nerve the arm to vindicate their right.
_MacKellar._
LAVENDER.... _Distrust_.
It was anciently believed that the asp, a dangerous species of viper,
made Lavender its habitual place of abode, for which reason that plant
was approached with extreme caution. The Romans used it largely in their
baths, from whence its name is derived.
* * * * *
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.
_Shakspeare._
* * * * *
Who never doubted never half believed,
Where doubt there truth is--’tis her shadow.
_Bailey._
* * * * *
When first, with all a lover’s pride,
I wooed and won thee for my bride,
I little thought that thou couldst be
Estranged as now thou art from me!
_Anon._
* * * * *
Thy confidence is held from me,
In fear my love but shows,
Like one, art thou, who fears the bee
May sting thee, through the rose.
_Anon._
PANSY.... _Think of me_.
The Pansy, or Heart’s-ease, is a beautiful variety of the Violet,
differing from it in the diversity of its colours. In fragrance it is
inferior to the Violet. Pansy is an old English corruption of the French
Pensée.
* * * * *
“And there are Pansies, that’s for thoughts.”
_Shakspeare._
* * * * *
CHILDHOOD.
Sister, arise, the sun shines bright,
The bee is humming in the air,
The stream is singing in the light,
The May-buds never looked more fair;
Blue is the sky, no rain to-day:
Get up, it has been light for hours,
And we have not begun to play,
Nor have we gathered any flowers.
Time, who looked on, each accent caught,
And said, “He is too young for thought.”
YOUTH.
To-night, beside the garden-gate?
Oh, what a while the night is coming!
I never saw the sun so late,
No heard the bee at this time humming!
I thought the flowers an hour ago
Had closed their bells and sunk to rest:
How slowly flies that hooded crow!
How light it is along the west!
Said Time, “He yet hath to be taught
That I oft move too quick for thought.”
MANHOOD.
What thoughts wouldst thou in me awaken?
Not love? for that brings only tears--
Nor friendship? no, I was forsaken!
Pleasure I have not known for years:
The future I would not foresee,
I know too much from what is past,
No happiness is there for me,
And troubles ever come too fast.
Said Time, “No comfort have I brought,
The past to him’s one painful thought.”
OLD AGE.
Somehow the flowers seem different now,
The Daisies dimmer than of old;
There’s fewer blossoms on the bough,
The Hawthorn buds look gray and cold;
The Pansies wore another dye
When I was young--when I was young!
There’s not that blue about the sky
Which every way in those days hung.
There’s nothing now looks as it “ought.”
Said Time, “The change is in thy thought.”
_Miller._
* * * * *
I think of thee at morn, when glisten
The tearful dew-drops on the grass;
I think of thee at eve, and listen,
When the low, whispering breezes pass.
_E. R. H._
* * * * *
And thou, so rich in gentle names, appealing
To hearts that own our nature’s common lot;
Thou, styled by sportive Fancy’s better feeling
A Thought, the Heart’s-Ease, and Forget-me-not.
_Barton._
DAISY.... _Innocence_.
Shakspeare speaks of the Daisy as the flower
Whose white investments figure innocence;
and succeeding poets have generally used it as the image of that pure
quality. Fable informs us that the Daisy owes its origin to Belides, one
of the Dryads, who were supposed to preside over meadows and pastures.
While dancing on the turf with Ephigeus, whose suit she encouraged, she
attracted the admiration of Vertumnus, the deity who presided over
orchards; and, to escape from him, she was transformed into the humble
flower, the Latin name of which is Bellis. The ancient English name of
the flower was Day’s Eye, of which Daisy is a corruption. In Ossian’s
poems, the Daisy is called the flower of the new-born--most expressive
of innocence.
* * * * *
When smitten by the morning ray,
I see thee rise alert and gay,
Then, cheerful flower! my spirits play
With kindred gladness:
And when, at dark, by dews opprest,
Thou sink’st, the image of thy rest
Hath often eased my pensive breast
Of careful sadness.
_Wordsworth._
* * * * *
She dwells amid the world’s dark ways,
Pure as in childhood’s hours;
And all her thoughts are poetry,
And all her words are flowers.
_Mrs. M. E. Hewitt._
* * * * *
’Twas when the world was in its prime,
When meadows green and woodlands wild
Were strewn with flowers, in sweet spring-time,
And everywhere the Daisies smiled.
When undisturbed the ring-doves cooed,
While lovers sang each other’s praises,
As in embowered lanes they wooed,
Or on some bank white o’er with Daisies:
While Love went by with muffled feet,
Singing, “The Daisies they are sweet.”
Unfettered then he roamed abroad,
And as he willed it past the hours--
Now lingering idly by the road,
Now loitering by the wayside flowers;
For what cared he about the morrow?
Too young to sigh, too old to fear--
No time had he to think of sorrow,
Who found the Daisies everywhere;
Still sang he, through each green retreat,
“The Daisies they are very sweet.”
With many a maiden did he dally,
Like a glad brook that turns away--
Here in, there out, across the valley,
With every pebble stops to play;
Taking no note of space nor time,
Through flowers, the banks adorning,
Still rolling on, with silver chime,
In star-clad night and golden morning.
So went Love on, through cold and heat,
Singing, “The Daisy’s ever sweet.”
’Twas then the flowers were haunted
With fairy forms and lovely things,
Whose beauty elder bards have chanted,
And how they lived in crystal springs,
And swang upon the honied bells;
In meadows danced round dark green mazes,
Strewed flowers around the holy wells,
But never trampled on the Daisies.
They spared the star that lit their feet,
The Daisy was so very sweet.
_Miller._
* * * * *
When soothed awhile by milder airs,
Thee Winter in the garland wears
That thinly shades his few gray hairs;
Spring cannot shun thee;
Whole summer fields are thine by right,
And autumn, melancholy wight,
Doth in thy crimson head delight,
When rains are on thee.
In shoals and bands, a morrice train,