Let us turn away for a moment from the credulity and eccentricity of man’s feebleness and folly, to the contemplation of “the firstling of the year” from the bosom of our common mother. The Snow-drop is described in the “Flora Domestica” as “the earliest flower of all our wild flowers, and will even show her head above the snow, as if to prove her rivalry in whiteness;” as if
—Flora’s breath, by some transforming power,
Had chang’d an icicle into a flower.
Mrs. Barbauld.
One of its greatest charms is its “coming in a wintry season, when few others visit us: we look upon it as a friend in adversity; sure to come when most needed.”
Like pendent flakes of vegetating snow,
The early herald of the infant year,
Ere yet the adventurous crocus dares to blow,
Beneath the orchard-boughs, thy buds appear.
While still the cold north-east ungenial lowers,
And scarce the hazel in the leafless copse,
Or sallows, show their downy powder’d flowers,
The grass is spangled with thy silver drops.
Charlotte Smith.