Fair Flora! now attend thy sportful feast,
Of which some days I with design have past;—
A part in April and a part in May
Thou claims’t, and both command my tuneful lay;
And as the confines of two months are thine
To sing of both the double task be mine.
Circus and stage are open now and free—
Goddess! again thy feast my theme must be.
Since new opinions oft delusive are
Do thou, O Flora, who thou art declare;
Why should thy poet on conjectures dwell?
Thy name and attributes thou best can’st tell.
Thus I.—to which she ready answer made,
And rosy sweets attended what she said;
Though, now corrupted, Flora be my name,
From the Greek Chloris that corruption came:—
In fields where happy mortals whilome stray’d
Chloris my name, I was a rural maid;
To praise herself a modest nymph will shun,
But yet a god was by my beauty won.
Flora then relates, that Zephyr became enamoured of her as Boreas had been, that “by just marriage to his bed,” she was united to Zephyr, who assigned her the dominion over Spring, and that she strews the earth with flowers and presides over gardens. She further says, as the deity of flowers,—
I also rule the plains.
When the crops flourish in the golden field;
The harvest will undoubted plenty yield;
If purple clusters flourish on the vine,
The presses will abound with racy wine;
The flowering olive makes a beauteous year,
And how can bloomless trees ripe apples bear?
The flower destroyed of vetches, beans, and peas,
You must expect but small or no increase;
The gift of honey’s mine, the painful bees,
That gather sweets from flowers or blooming trees,
To scented shrubs and violets I invite,
In which I know they take the most delight;
A flower an emblem of young years is seen,
With all its leaves around it fresh and green;
So youth appears, when health the body sways,
And gladness in the mind luxuriant plays.
From these allegorical ascriptions, the Roman people worshipped Flora, and celebrated her festivals by ceremonies and rejoicings, and offerings of spring flowers and the branches of trees in bloom, which through the accommodation of the Romish church to the pagan usages, remain to us at the present day.
Wellington, Under the Wrekin.
For the Every-Day Book.
It has been usual for the people in this neighbourhood to assemble on the Wrekin-hill, on the Sunday after May-day, and the three successive Sundays, to drink a health “to all friends round the Wrekin;” but as on this annual festival, various scenes of drunkenness and other licentiousness were frequently exhibited, its celebration has, of late, been very properly discouraged by the magistracy, and is going deservedly to decay.
February, 1826.
W. P.