PREDICTIONS OF FLOWERS.
To what excellent account have our thoughtful old writers turned these prophetic indications of changeful flowers! Bishop Hall, in his Occasional Meditations, has the following “On the Light of Tulips, and Marigolds, &c. in his Garden:” “These flowers are the true clients of the sun; how observant they are of his motion and influence! At even, they shut up, as mourning for his departure, without whom they neither can see nor flourish; in the morning, they welcome his rising with a cheerful openness; and at noon, are fully displayed in a free acknowledgment of his bounty.
“Thus doth the good heart turn unto God. ‘When thou turnedst away thy face, I was troubled,’ saith the man after God’s own heart. ‘In thy presence is life; yea, the fulness of joy.’ Thus doth the carnal heart to the world: when that withdraws its favours, he is dejected; and revives with a smile. All is in our choice. Whatsoever is our sun will thus carry us.
“O God, be Thou to me such as Thou art in Thyself: Thou shalt be merciful in drawing me; I shall be happy in following thee.”
The use of Perfumes in the last century exceeded that in the present day. Possibly the old notion that they were employed to mask the exhalations from diseased persons may have driven perfumes out of fashion in our day; we recollect musk to have been specially so considered. Bishop Hall, in his Occasional Meditations, adverts to this use of perfumes in a meditation illustrative of a custom which is associated with the symbolic character of “flowers and redolent plants, just emblems of the life of man, which has been compared in Holy Scriptures to those fading beauties, whose roots, being buried in dishonour, rise again in glory.”[[135]] The Bishop’s meditation is “On the Sight of a Coffin stuck with Flowers:”
“Too fair in appearance is never free from just suspicion. While there was nothing but wood, no flower was to be seen here; now that this wood is lined with an unsavoury corpse, it is adorned with this sweet variety. The fir, whereof that coffin is made, yields a natural redolence alone; now that it is stuffed thus noisomely, all helps are too little to countervail that scent of corruption.[[136]]
[135]. Evelyn.
[136]. See “Flowers on Graves,” in Mysteries of Life, Death, and Futurity.