Sweets to the sweet. Farewell!
I hoped thou shoulds't have been my Hamlet's wife;
I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid,
And not t' have strewed thy grave.
Hamlet.
Flowers are peculiarly suitable ornaments for the grave, for as Evelyn truly says, "they are just emblems of the life of man, which has been compared in Holy Scripture to those fading creatures, whose roots being buried in dishonor rise again in glory."[061]
This thought is natural and just. It is indeed a most impressive sight, a most instructive pleasure, to behold some "bright consummate flower" rise up like a radiant exhalation or a beautiful vision--like good from evil--with such stainless purity and such dainty loveliness, from the hot-bed of corruption.
Milton turns his acquaintance with flowers to divine account in his Lycidas.
Return; Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye vallies low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks;
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers.
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies.
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,[062] And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies,
For, so to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with faint surmise
Here is a nosegay of spring-flowers from the hand of Thomson:--
Fair handed Spring unbosoms every grace,
Throws out the snow drop and the crocus first,
the daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue,
And polyanthus of unnumbered dyes,
The yellow wall flower, stained with iron brown,
And lavish stock that scents the garden round,
From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed,
Anemonies, auriculas, enriched
With shining meal o'er all their velvet leaves
And full ranunculus of glowing red
Then comes the tulip race, where Beauty plays
Her idle freaks from family diffused
To family, as flies the father dust,
The varied colors run, and while they break
On the charmed eye, the exulting Florist marks
With secret pride, the wonders of his hand
Nor gradual bloom is wanting, from the bird,
First born of spring, to Summer's musky tribes
Nor hyacinth, of purest virgin white,
Low bent, and, blushing inward, nor jonquils,
Of potent fragrance, nor Narcissus fair,
As o'er the fabled fountain hanging still,
Nor broad carnations, nor gay spotted pinks;
Nor, showered from every bush, the damask rose.
Infinite varieties, delicacies, smells,
With hues on hues expression cannot paint,
The breath of Nature and her endless bloom.
Here are two bouquets of flowers from the garden of Cowper
Laburnum, rich
In streaming gold, syringa, ivory pure,
The scentless and the scented rose, this red,
And of an humbler growth, the other[063] tall,
And throwing up into the darkest gloom
Of neighboring cypress, or more sable yew,
Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf
That the wind severs from the broken wave,
The lilac, various in array, now white,
Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set
With purple spikes pyramidal, as if
Studious of ornament yet unresolved
Which hue she most approved, she chose them all,
Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan,
But well compensating her sickly looks
With never cloying odours, early and late,
Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm
Of flowers, like flies clothing her slender rods,
That scarce a loaf appears, mezereon too,
Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset
With blushing wreaths, investing every spray,
Althaea with the purple eye, the broom
Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloy'd,
Her blossoms, and luxuriant above all
The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets,
The deep dark green of whose unvarnish'd leaf
Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more,
The bright profusion of her scatter'd stars