The plant is indeed irregularly shaped, but it is not deformed, and if it is dangerous to the touch, so also is the rose, unless it be of that species which Milton places in Paradise--"and without thorns the rose."
Hurdis is more complimentary and more just to the richest ornament of the swelling hill and the level moor.
And what more noble than the vernal furze
With golden caskets hung?
I have seen whole cotees or coteaux (sides of hills) in the sweet little island of Jersey thickly mantled with the golden radiance of this beautiful wildflower. The whole Vallée des Vaux (the valley of vallies) is sometimes alive with its lustre.
VALLEE DES VAUX.
AIR--THE MEETING OF THE WATERS.
If I dream of the past, at fair Fancy's command,
Up-floats from the blue sea thy small sunny land!
O'er thy green hills, sweet Jersey, the fresh breezes blow,
And silent and warm is the Vallée des Vaux!
There alone have I loitered 'mid blossoms of gold,
And forgot that the great world was crowded and cold,
Nor believed that a land of enchantment could show
A vale more divine than the Vallée des Vaux.
A few scattered cots, like white clouds in the sky,
Or like still sails at sea when the light breezes die,
And a mill with its wheel in the brook's silver glow,
Form thy beautiful hamlet, sweet Vallée des Vaux!
As the brook prattled by like an infant at play,
And each wave as it passed stole a moment away,
I thought how serenely a long life would flow,
By the sweet little brook in the Vallée des Vaux.
D.L.R.
Jersey is not the only one of the Channel Islands that is enriched with "blossoms of gold." In the sister island of Guernsey the prickly gorse is much used for hedges, and Sir George Head remarks that the premises of a Guernsey farmer are thus as impregnably fortified and secured as if his grounds were surrounded by a stone wall. In the Isle of Man the furze grows so high that it is sometimes more like a fir tree than the ordinary plant.
There is an old proverb:--"When gorse is out of blossom, kissing is out of fashion"--that is never. The gorse blooms all the year.