Will be a loved and happy wife.
May is the month when meadows and woods put on their richest garb of green. May is the month of the emerald. The ancients said that the gem was the captured glow of the firefly.
Deep green and translucent, this stone at its best is very rare. It was prized before and beyond all other stones and, for large flawless gems, outvies the diamond. Among church stones it ranks very high; Andreas, Bishop of Caesarea, wrote of the emerald: “Its transparency and beauty may not change; we conceive the stone to signify John the Evangel.”
The potency of the emerald has been extolled in various fields. It was especially prized as a panacea for poisons. In this field, it was an admirable alexipharmic; it protected against poison from fangèd bite, and from the gangrene of wounds. It warded off the dangers of poison artfully secreted in food; also, of poison from eating the wrong food, as toadstools for mushrooms, spoiled food, or just too much food. And it preserved one from that most pestilent of all poisons, the poisoning of the mind.
Still more widespread was the use of the emerald as a talisman and a cure-all for the eye. The calming influence of its dark green hue has been recognized from early times to the modern eye shade. The Roman Emperor Nero, who suffered from an eye ailment, used to hold a specially ground emerald before his eye to relieve the strain, and to enjoy the relaxation that came with its gentle soothing. In the early Renaissance the watchmakers and the goldsmiths, their eyes bleary from long strain at their fine operations, would pause in their work and gaze upon an emerald. The emerald is the only stone that delights the eye without ever bringing fatigue.
Less worthy use was made of the emerald by those ambitious in love. In the Orient, the emerald was the token of love and was often used to adorn the statues of the god or the goddess of love. But later it became associated (as were the gods themselves) with the more passionate aspects of love. Then the emerald was employed—often, of course, as a bribe to the pandar or a gift to the girl, but also as a talisman—by those who sought success in their amours.
It is in its more peaceful aspects, of the green and eye-enchanting colors of May, that one cherishes the emerald.
Spring in its glory
Tells the bright story