I
They welcome our steps without the city gates, on a gay and eager carpet
of many colours, which they wave madly in the sunlight. It is evident
that they were expecting us. When the first bright rays of March
appeared, the Snowdrop, or Amaryllis, the heroic daughter of the
hoar-frost, sounded the reveille. Next sprang from the earth efforts, as
yet shapeless, of a slumbering memory: vague ghosts of flowers; pale
flowers that are scarcely flowers at all: the three-fingered Saxifrage,
or Samphire; the almost invisible Shepherd's Pouch; the two-leaved
Squill; the Stinking Hellebore, or Christmas Rose; the Colt's Foot; the
gloomy and poisonous Spurge Laurel: all plants of frail and doubtful
health, pale-blue, pale-pink, undecided attempts, the first fever of
life in which nature expels her ill humours, anæmic captives set free by
winter, convalescent patients from the underground prisons, timid and
unskilful endeavours of the still buried light.
But soon this light ventures forth into space; the nuptial thoughts of
the earth become clearer and purer; the rough attempts disappear; the
half-dreams of the night lift like a fog dispelled by the dawn; and the
good rustic flowers begin their unseen revels under the blue, all around
the cities where man knows them not. No matter, they are there, making
honey, while their proud and barren sisters, who alone receive our care,
are still trembling in the depths of the hot-houses. They will still be
there, in the flooded fields, in the broken paths, and adorning the
roads with their simplicity, when the first snows shall have covered
the country-side. No one sows them and no one gathers them. They survive
their glory, and man treads them under foot. Formerly, however, and not
so long ago, they alone represented Nature's gladness. Formerly,
however, a few hundred years ago, before their dazzling and chilly
kinswomen had come from the Antilles, from India, from Japan, or before
their own daughters, ungrateful and unrecognizable, had usurped their
place, they alone enlivened the stricken gaze, they alone brightened the
cottage porch, the castle precincts, and followed the lovers' footsteps
in the woods. But those times are no more; and they are dethroned. They
have retained of their past happiness only the names which they received
when they were loved.
And these names show all that they were to man: all his gratitude, his
studious fondness, all that he owed them, all that they gave him are
there contained, like a secular aroma in hollow pearls. And so they bear
names of queens, shepherdesses, virgins, princesses, sylphs and fairies,
which flow from the lips like a caress, a lightning-flash, a kiss, a
murmur of love. Our language, I think, contains nothing that is better,
more daintily, more affectionately named than these homely flowers. Here
the word clothes the idea almost always with care, with light precision,
with admirable happiness. It is like an ornate and transparent stuff
that moulds the form which it embraces and has the proper shade, perfume
and sound. Call to mind the Easter Daisy, the Violet, the Bluebell, the
Poppy, or, rather, Coquelicot: the name is the flower itself. How
wonderful, for instance, that sort of cry and crest of light and joy:
"Coquelicot!" to designate the scarlet flower which the scientists crush
under this barbarous title: _Papaver rhoeas!_ See the Primrose, or,
rather, the Cowslip, the Periwinkle, the Anemone, the Wild Hyacinth, the
blue Speedwell, the Forget-me-not, the Wild Bindweed, the Iris, the
Harebell: their name depicts them by equivalents and analogies which the
greatest poets but rarely light upon. It represents all their ingenuous
and visible soul. It hides itself, it bends over, it rises to the ear
even as those who bear it lie concealed, stoop forward, or stand erect
in the corn and in the grass.
These are the few names that are known to all of us; we do not know the
others, though their music describes with the same gentleness, the same
happy genius, flowers which we see by every wayside and upon all the
paths. Thus, at this moment, that is to say, at the end of the month in
which the ripe corn falls beneath the reaper's sickle, the banks of the
roads are a pale violet: it is the Sweet Scabious, who has blossomed at
last, discreet, aristocratically poor and modestly beautiful, as her
title, that of a mist-veiled precious stone, proclaims. Around her, a
treasure lies scattered: it is the Ranunculus, or Buttercup, who has two
names, even as he has two lives; for he is at once the innocent virgin
that covers the grass with sun-drops, and the redoubtable and venomous
wizard that deals out death to heedless animals. Again we have the
Milfoil and the St. John's Wort, little flowers, once useful, that march
along the roads, like silent school-girls, clad in a dull uniform; the
vulgar and innumerous Bird's Groundsel; her big brother, the Hare's
Lettuce of the fields; then the dangerous black Nightshade; the
Bitter-sweet, who hides herself; the creeping Knotweed, with the patient
leaves: all the families without show, with the resigned smile, wearing
the practical grey livery of autumn, which already is felt to be at
hand.