[64] "The Winter's Tale"; Act IV, Scene III.
Then in the beautiful dawn-song in "Cymbeline"[65] "winking Mary-buds" remind us that the gold-flower is consecrated to the Virgin Mary. This song, so full of the freshness of early morning and the sweet perfume of flowers holding in their deep cups sufficient dew to water the horses of the sun just appearing above the horizon, is one of the loveliest of lyrics:
Hark! Hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phœbus 'gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin to ope their golden eyes;
With everything that pretty is—My lady, sweet, arise:
Arise, arise.
[65] Act II, Scene III.
"The Marygold," says Lyte, "hath pleasant, bright and shining yellow flowers, the which do close at the setting down of the Sun and do spread and open again at the Sun rising."
And Lupton writes: "Some do call it Spousa Solis, the Spowse of the Sun, because it sleeps and is awakened with him."
In "The Rape of Lucrece" Shakespeare also mentions the flower:
Her eyes, like marigolds, hath sheathed their light
And canopied in darkness sweetly lay
Till they might open to adorn the day.
Very prettily the flower is introduced in Middleton and Rowley's "Spanish Gipsy":
You the Sun to her must play,
She to you the Marigold,
To none but you her leaves unfold.