very year a ‘flower-sermon’ is preached in London, in accordance with an admirable custom; and the orator, we may be sure, has no difficulty in ‘improving the occasion.’ The materials lie rich and ready to his hand. The Laureate, indeed, has asked to what uses we shall put the wildweed flower which simply blows, and has inquired further if there be any moral shut within the bosom of the rose. He was answered long ago by Horace Smith:
‘Your voiceless lips, O Flowers! are living preachers,
Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book;’
and a living poetess has assured us, likewise, that flowers will preach to us if we will hear, the rose telling us that all her loveliness is born upon a thorn, and the poppy urging that, though her scarlet head is held in scorn,
‘Yet juice of subtle virtues lies
Within my cup of curious dyes.’
There is one lesson which the flowers have been made to teach with rather wearisome iteration. The poets have never been tired of dwelling upon their brief existence and seeing in it a reflection of our own. This rather trite melody has been sounded from the earliest to the latest times. Drummond of Hawthornden draws attention to the flower ‘which lingeringly doth fade,’ and sees in it a type of his own life, which ‘scarce shows now what it hath been.’ Herrick, apostrophizing blossoms, deduces from them the fact that all things have their end, though ne’er so brave. ‘Fade, flowers, fade!’ cries Waller; ‘’Tis but what we must in our autumn do.’ And so Dryden:
‘The rose is fragrant, but it fades in time...
Such is your blooming youth, and withering so.’
‘Youth’s withered flowers’ made John Clare sigh to think that in him they would never bloom again.
But this, which may be said to be the orthodox teaching of the flowers, has found many influential questioners, who have dwelt upon the brighter side of the contention. And it is pleasant to listen to their more cheerful voices. ‘Not an opening blossom breathes in vain,’ wrote Thomson; and the sentiment is heartily corroborated by Mr. Lowell:
‘There never yet was flower fair in vain;
Let classic poets rhyme it as they will.’