Thorn-Apple.... Deceitful Charms.
The flowers of the Thorn-Apple droop while the sun shines beneath their dull-looking foliage, but on the approach of night, they revive, display their charms, and unfold their prodigious bells, which nature has coloured with purple, lined with ivory; and to which she has given an odour that attracts and intoxicates, but is so dangerous as to stupify those who inhale it even in the open air. It is a dangerous plant to be allowed to grow where children go, as the beauty of its flowers and fruit is liable to tempt them to their destruction; since it possesses so poisonous a quality as to produce paralysis, and even madness, in those who have eaten it. Its leaves have been recommended for coughs and asthma. The charms of the Thorn-Apple flower are beautiful, but deadly; like those of the corrupt and treacherous, to be found in every society.
But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow-falls in the river,
A moment white—then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow’s lovely form
Envanishing amid the storm.
O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Shakspeare.
Get thee glass eyes;
And like a scurvy politician, seem
To see the things thou dost not.
Shakspeare.
Women of kind have conditions three:
The first is,—they be full of deceit,
To spinne also is their property,
And women have a wonderful conceit,
For they can weep oft, and all is a sleight,
And ever when they list, a tear is in the eye,
Beware, therefore,—the blind eateth many a fly.