To the lady of the vernal hours.
Poor Keats, who was passionately fond of flowers, and everything beautiful or romantic or picturesque, complains, with a true poet's earnestness, that in his day in England there were
No crowds of nymphs, soft-voiced and young and gay
In woven baskets, bringing ears of corn,
Roses and pinks and violets, to adorn
The shrine of Flora in her early May.
The Floral Games--Jeux Floraux--of Toulouse--first celebrated at the commencement of the fourteenth century, are still kept up annually with great pomp and spirit. Clemence Isaure, a French lady, bequeathed to the Academy of Toulouse a large sum of money for the annual celebration of these games. A sort of College Council is formed, which not only confers degrees on those poets who do most honor to the Goddess Flora, but sometimes grants them more substantial favors. In 1324 the poets were encouraged to compete for a golden violet and a silver eglantine and pansy. A century later the prizes offered were an amaranthus of gold of the value of 400 livres, for the best ode, a violet of silver, valued at 250 livres, for an essay in prose, a silver pansy, worth 200 livres, for an eclogue, elegy or idyl, and a silver lily of the value of sixty livres, for the best sonnet or hymn in honor of the Virgin Mary,--for religion is mixed up with merriment, and heathen with Christian rites. He who gained a prize three times was honored with the title of Doctor en gaye science, the name given to the poetry of the Provençal troubadours. A mass, a sermon, and alms-giving, commence the ceremonies. The French poet, Ronsard who had gained a prize in the floral games, so delighted Mary Queen of Scots with his verses on the Rose that she presented him with a silver rose worth £500, with this inscription--"A Ronsard, l'Apollon de la source des Muses."
At Ghent floral festivals are held twice a year when amateur and professional florists assemble together and contribute each his share of flowers to the grand general exhibition which is under the direct patronage of the public authorities. Honorary medals are awarded to the possessors of the finest flowers.
The chief floral festival of the Chinese is on their new year's day, when their rivers are covered with boats laden with flowers, and gay flags streaming from every mast. Their homes and temples are richly hung with festoons of flowers. Boughs of the peach and plum trees in blossom, enkíanthus quinque-flòra, camelias, cockscombs, magnolias, jonquils are then exposed for sale in all the streets of Canton. Even the Chinese ladies, who are visible at no other season, are seen on this occasion in flower-boats on the river or in the public gardens on the shore.
The Italians, it is said, still have artificers called Festaroli, whose business it is to prepare festoons and garlands. The ancient Romans were very tasteful in their nosegays and chaplets. Pliny tells us that the Sicyonians were especially celebrated for the graceful art exhibited in the arrangement of the varied colors of their garlands, and he gives us the story of Glycera who, to please her lover Pausias, the painter of Sicyon, used to send him the most exquisite chaplets of her own braiding, which he regularly copied on his canvas. He became very eminent as a flower-painter. The last work of his pencil, and his master-piece, was a picture of his mistress in the act of arranging a chaplet. The picture was called the Garland Twiner. It is related that Antony for some time mistrusting Cleopatra made her taste in the first instance every thing presented to him at her banquets. One day "the Serpent of old Nile" after dipping her own coronet of flowers into her goblet drank up the wine and then directed him to follow her example. He was off his guard. He dipped his chaplet in his cup. The leaves had been touched with poison. He was just raising the cup to his lips when she seized his arm, and said "Cease your jealous doubts, for know, that if I had desired your death or wished to live without you, I could easily have destroyed you." The Queen then ordered a prisoner to be brought into their presence, who being made to drink from the cup, instantly expired.[059]
Some of the nosegays made up by "flower-girls" in London and its neighbourhood are sold at such extravagant prices that none but the very wealthy are in the habit of purchasing them, though sometimes a poor lover is tempted to present his mistress on a ball-night with a bouquet that he can purchase only at the cost of a good many more leaves of bread or substantial meals than he can well spare. He has to make every day a banian-day for perhaps half a month that his mistress may wear a nosegay for a few hours. However, a lover is often like a cameleon and can almost live on air--for a time--"promise-crammed." 'You cannot feed capons so.'
At Covent Garden Market, (in London) and the first-rate Flower-shops, a single wreath or nosegay is often made up for the head or hand at a price that would support a poor labourer and his family for a month. The colors of the wreaths are artfully arranged, so as to suit different complexions, and so also as to exhibit the most rare and costly flowers to the greatest possible advantage.
All true poets