The passage in our New Testament translated “A crown of glory that fadeth not away” is in the original Greek “The amaranthine crown of glory.” Milton is frequently found to use the word; it occurs several times in the “Paradise Lost.” The following fine passage from the third book of that poem will sufficiently well illustrate his application of it—
“The multitude of angels, with a shout
Loud as from numbers without number, sweet
As from blest voices, uttering joy. Heaven rang
With jubilee, and loud hosannas filled
The eternal regions. Lowly reverent
Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground
With solemn adoration, down they cast
Their crowns inwove with amaranth and gold—
Immortal amaranth.”
This plant Milton represents as “shading the fount of life,” and with its blood-red flowers—
“With these, that never fade, the spirits elect
Bind their resplendent locks.”
The Egyptians wreathed their dead in chaplets of the sacred lotus to prepare their spirits for entrance into the presence of the great Osiris. Several other plants, however, were also employed, but whether their employment was symbolic or not we have no means of ascertaining.
Amongst the various vegetable curiosities and treasures,—seeds, gums, wood-sections, and the like—preserved in the large Museum at Kew, will be found—though thousands tramp by them unknowingly—what we may almost venture to call some of the most wonderful things in the world. They are but chaplets, wreaths, and garlands of dried leaves and flowers, until presently we realise that we are gazing on memorials of the dead that were buried with them more than a thousand years before the Christian era. The imagination is then awed as our thoughts attempt to bridge over the interval of two thousand years between these present days and that far-off morning in the childhood of the world when the beautiful fresh flowers of the blue lotus of the Nile were placed in the coffin of Rameses II. Almost all the history of the world has been made since those fragile emblems of passing beauty were laid in the tomb. Empires and monarchies have risen, flourished, and decayed in the interval, and yet this very day, within a mile of where we write these lines, remain, with all their solemn teaching, these wreaths of flowers gathered in the sunshine of old Egypt twenty centuries ago.
“The past is but a gorgeous dream,
And time glides by us like a stream,
While musing on thy story,
And sorrow prompts a deep alas!
That like a pageant thus should pass
To wreck all human glory.”
Changeless in the midst of mighty changes, these delicate petals are far more wonderful even than the great monuments of Egypt, its pyramids, temples, and obelisks, wonderful as these are, for on those Time has worked with its corroding tooth, while on these it has had but little power. Changeless, again, in all their pristine and God-given beauty, while all the fashions of earth have passed through their kaleidoscope changes, “to one thing constant never,” these beautiful lilies of the Nile yet expand their petals every year at Kew within a short distance of these dried flowers of the same species that sprang into existence in the far-off river of Egypt in the dim centuries of the mighty past.[35]
The Asphodel, referred to by Homer and many later poets, was a plant having edible roots that were laid in the tombs of the dead to nourish the departed spirit in its wanderings in the dim world of shadows. Lucian has a very good illustrative passage that we may here quote. The words are put into the mouth of Charon, and are as follows:—“Down here with us there is nothing to be had but asphodel, and libations and oblations, and that in the midst of mist and darkness; but up in heaven it is all bright and clear, and plenty of ambrosia there, and nectar without stint.” The plant referred to by the classic poets was supposed to be the narcissus, but in mediæval days the wild daffodil was intended, at least by the poets, while the herbalists were all at sea in the matter, and applied the name to several different plants.