Broom.... Humility.
Thomas Miller thus speaks of the “bonny Broom,” in his Romance of Nature:—
Beautiful art thou, O Broom! waving in all thy rich array of green and gold, on the breezy bosom of the bee-haunted heath. The sleeping sunshine, and the silver-footed showers, the clouds that for ever play about the face of Heaven, the homeless winds, and the crystal-globed dews, that settle upon thy blossoms like sleep on the veined eyelids of an infant, are ever beating above and around thee, as if to tell that they rejoice in thy companionship, and that, although a thousand years have strided by with silent steps, time hath not abated an atom of their love. Who can tell the thoughts of Saxon Alfred when, wandering alone, crownless and sceptreless, he stretched himself on the lonely moor beneath the shadow of thy golden blossoms, sighing for the fair queen he had left far behind? When he bowed his kingly head, and, musing on thy beauty, buried in a solitary wild, thought how even regal dignity would be enhanced by humility, and that, although thou didst grow there unmarked and unpruned, not a more princely flower waved in his own English garden.
Humility, that low, sweet root,
From which all heavenly virtues shoot.
Oh the Broom, the bonny bonny Broom,
The Broom of the Cowden-knowes;
For sure so soft, so sweet a bloom,
Elsewhere there never grows.
Scottish Song.
Here is a precious jewel I have found
Among the filth and rubbish of the world.
I’ll stoop for it, but when I wear it here,
Set on my forehead like the morning-star,
The world may wonder, but it will not laugh.
Longfellow.