"He twists his coronals of fancy
Out of all blossoms,"
if I may so misapply a line from Lord Houghton's Letters of Youth. He makes moralities out of Daffodils, and compliments from Carnations, and warnings from Rosebuds. Charming as many of his poems about flowers are, it is impossible not to feel that the motive of the poem is not the flower itself, but the Anthea or Sappho or Julia, to whom the flower is to teach a lesson of the power of love or the uncertainty of life.
It is, of course, impossible to speak of all the poets who have written about flowers, for probably the list would include them all; but the five I have mentioned are perhaps the most characteristic, though there are memorable lines in Chaucer, Spenser, Burns, and Keats, and more especially in Wordsworth.
From Byron there is singularly little to quote; but no English poet has given so perfect a description of a garden as has Shelley in "The Sensitive Plant." How delicately he paints each flower, and how he makes us see them all, as we tread with him
"The sinuous paths of lawn and of moss
Which led through the garden along and across;
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees."
Of living English poets perhaps Mr. Tennyson alone shows any real love for flowers. And this love is scarcely shown so much in the well-known song in "Maud" as by little touches here and there—the "long green box of mignonette" which the miller's daughter has set on her casement edge,—the "wild marsh-marygold" which "shines like fire in swamps" for the happy May Queen,—or the water-lilies which blossom round the island of Shalott. And who can forget the stanza in "In Memoriam"?—
"Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire,
The little speedwell's darling blue,
Deep tulips dasht with fiery dew,
Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire."
Of American poets, Mr. Longfellow has, rather strangely, written nothing very memorable about flowers; but there are some pretty verses of Mr. Bryant's, and an occasional good line of Mr. Emerson's, as where he speaks of the Gentian as "blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover."
As we once again look round upon the poets that have sung, it is clear that their favourite flowers have been the Rose and the Daisy,—the one recalling all the delights of the summer garden, the other all the freshness of the open field,—the one loved for its beauty, the other cherished for its constancy.