GARDEN IN MACBETH'S CASTLE OF CAWDOR
The delightful Dr. Forbes Watson writes of the daffodil like a painter, with accurate observation and bright palette:
"In the daffodil the leaves and stems are of a full glaucous green, a color not only cool and refreshing in itself, but strongly suggestive of water, the most apparent source of freshness and constituting a most delicious groundwork for the bright, lively yellow of the blossoms. Now what sort of spathe would be likely to contribute best to this remarkable effect of the flower? Should the colors be unusually striking or the size increased, or what? Strange to say, in both Daffodil and Pheasant's Eye (Poet's Narcissus) we find the spathe dry and withered, shrivelled up like a bit of thin brown paper and clinging round the base of the flowers. We cannot overlook it, and most assuredly we were never meant to do so. Nothing could have been more beautifully ordered than this contrast, there being just sufficient to make us appreciate more fully that abounding freshness of life.
"It is a plant which affords a most beautiful contrast, a cool, watery sheet of leaves with bright, warm flowers, yellow and orange, dancing over the leaves like meteors over a marsh. The leaves look full of watery sap, which is the life blood of plants and prime source of all their freshness, just as the tissues of a healthy child look plump and rosy from the warm blood circulating within.
"In its general expression the Poet's Narcissus seems a type of maiden purity and beauty, yet warmed by a love-breathing fragrance; and yet what innocence in the large soft eye which few can rival among the whole tribe of flowers. The narrow, yet vivid fringe of red so clearly seen amidst the whiteness suggests again the idea of purity and gushing passion—purity with a heart which can kindle into fire."
III
"Daisies Pied and Violets Blue"
DAISY (Bellis perennis). Shakespeare often mentions the daisy. With "violets blue" "lady-smocks all silver-white," and "cuckoo-buds of every hue," it "paints the meadows with delight" in that delightful spring-song in "Love's Labour's Lost."[34] Shakespeare also uses this flower as a beautiful comparison for the delicate hand of Lucrece in "The Rape of Lucrece":[35]
Without the bed her other fair hand was
On the green coverlet; whose perfect white
Showed like an April daisy on the grass.