March 7.
The Season.
The earth has now several productions for our gratification, if we stoop to gather and examine them. Young botanists should commence their inquiries before the season pours in its abundance. They who are admirers of natural beauties, may daily discover objects of delightful regard in the little peeping plants which escape the eye, unless their first appearance is narrowly looked for.
The Primrose.
Welcome, pale Primrose! starting up between
Dead matted leaves of ash and oak, that strew
The every lawn, the wood, and spinney through,
’Mid creeping moss and ivy’s darker green;
How much thy presence beautifies the ground:
How sweet thy modest, unaffected pride
Glows on the sunny bank, and wood’s warm side.
And when thy fairy flowers, in groups, are found,
The schoolboy roams enchantedly along,
Plucking the fairest with a rude delight:
While the meek shepherd stops his simple song,
To gaze a moment on the pleasing sight;
O’erjoy’d to see the flowers that truly bring
The welcome news of sweet returning spring!
Clare.
It is remarked by the lady of the “Flora Domestica,” that “this little flower, in itself so fair, shows yet fairer from the early season of its appearance; peeping forth even from the retreating snows of winter: it forms a happy shade of union between the delicate snowdrop and the flaming crocus, which also venture forth in the very dawn of spring.” The elegant authoress observes further: “There are many varieties of the primrose, so called, (the polyanthus and auricular, though bearing other names, are likewise varieties,) but the most common are the sulphur-coloured and the lilac. The lilac primrose does not equal the other in beauty: we do not often find it wild; it is chiefly known to us as a garden-flower. It is indeed the sulphur-coloured primrose which we particularly understand by that name: it is the primrose: it is this which we associate with the cowslips and the meadows: it is this which shines like an earth-star from the grass by the brook side, lighting the hand to pluck it. We do indeed give the name of primrose to the lilac flower, but we do this in courtesy: we feel that it is not the primrose of our youth; not the primrose with which we have played at bo-peep in the woods; not the irresistible primrose which has so often lured our young feet into the wet grass, and procured us coughs and chidings. There is a sentiment in flowers: there are flowers we cannot look upon, or even hear named, without recurring to something that has an interest in our hearts; such are the primrose, the cowslip, the May-flower, the daisy, &c. &c.” The poets have not neglected to pay due honours to this sweet spring-flower, which unites in itself such delicacy of form, colour, and fragrance; they give it a forlorn and pensive character. The poems of Clare are as thickly strewn with primroses as the woods themselves; the two following passages are from “The Village Minstrel.”
“O, who can speak his joys when spring’s young morn
From wood and pasture opened on his view,
When tender green buds blush upon the thorn,
And the first primrose dips its leaves in dew.
*****
“And while he pluck’d the primrose in its pride,
He ponder’d o’er its bloom ’twixt joy and pain;
And a rude sonnet in its praise he tried,
Where nature’s simple way the aid of art supplied.”