She loves him yet!
The flower the false one gave her
When last he came,
Is still with her wild tears wet.
She’ll ne’er forget,
Howe’er his faith may waver,
Through grief and shame,
Believe it,—she loves him yet!
Over the moorland, over the lea,
Dancing airily, there are we:
Sometimes, mounted on stems aloft,
We wave o’er broom and heather,
To meet the kiss of the zephyr soft;
Sometimes, close together,
Tired of dancing, tired of peeping,
Under the whin you’ll find us sleeping.
Daintily bend we our honied bells,
While the gossipping bee her story tells,
And drowsily hums and murmurs on
Of the wealth to her waxen storehouse gone;
And though she gathers our sweets the while,
We welcome her in with a nod and a smile.
No rock is too high—no vale too low,
For our fragile and tremulous forms to grow.
Sometimes we crown
The castle’s dizziest tower, and look
Laughingly down
On the pigmy men in the world below,
Wearily wandering to and fro.
Sometimes we dwell on the cragged crest
Of mountain high,
And the ruddy sun, from the blue sea’s breast,
Climbing the sky,
Looks from his couch of glory up,
And lights the dew in the bluebell’s cup.
We are crowning the mountain
With azure bells,
Or decking the fountains
In forest dells,
Or wreathing the ruin with clusters gray,
And nodding and laughing the livelong day;
Then chiming our lullaby, tired with play.
Are we not beautiful? Oh! are not we
The darlings of mountain and moorland and lea?
Plunge in the forest—are we not fair?
Go to the high-road—we’ll meet ye there.
Oh! where is the flower that content may tell,
Like the laughing and nodding and dancing bluebell.
Louisa A. Twamley.
The Hyacinth’s for constancy,
Wi’ its unchanging blue.
Burns.
Orchis.... A Belle.
The Butterfly Orchis is rather rare except where there is a chalky soil. The Spider Orchis has gained its name from the great resemblance it bears to one of those large, fat-bodied garden spiders, which are often noticed for the singular beauty of the markings on their backs. Another is so very like a fly, that it is named the Fly Orchis; another is like a lizard, or some strange reptile, and the flowers being yellow, green, and purple, and twisted in and about one another in a very odd way, it really looks like some horrible group of queer living creatures. One, from being fancied like a man, is called Man Orchis; another, very gayly spotted, and ornamented with a helmet-like appendage, is the Military Orchis; another is called Bee Orchis. Bishop Mant thus alludes to some of these:
Well boots it the thick-mantled leas
To traverse: if boon nature grant,
To crop the insect-seeming plant,
The vegetable Bee; or nigh
Of kin, the long-horned Butterfly,
White, or his brother purple pale,
Scenting alike the evening gale;
The Satyr flower, the pride of Kent,
Of Lizard form, and goat-like scent.
No wonder that cheek in its beauty transcendent,
Excelleth the beauty of others by far;
No wonder that eye is so richly resplendent,
For your heart is a rose and your soul is a star.