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.