poetry. The feeling is so well expressed in Michael Drayton's sprightly
eclogue called "Daffodil" that it forms a natural complement to the
happy song of care-free _Autolycus_ just quoted. This Pastoral captured
popular fancy; and it is just as fresh and buoyant as it was when
it was written three hundred years ago. Two shepherds, _Batte_ and
_Gorbo_, meet:
BATTE
Gorbo, as thou camst this way,
By yonder little hill,
Or, as thou through the fields didst stray,
Sawst thou my Daffodil?
She's in a frock of Lincoln green,
Which color likes the sight;
And never hath her beauty seen
But through a veil of white.
GORBO
Thou well describst the daffodil;
It is not full an hour
Since by the spring, near yonder hill,
I saw that lovely flower.
BATTE
Yet my fair flower thou didst not meet,
No news of her didst bring;
And yet my Daffodil's more sweet
Than that by yonder spring.
GORBO
I saw a shepherd that doth keep
In yonder field of lilies
Was making (as he fed his sheep)
A wreath of daffodillies.
BATTE
Yet, Gorbo, thou deludst me still,
My flower thou didst not see;
For know my pretty Daffodil
Is worn of none but me.
To show itself but near her feet
No lily is so bold,
Except to shade her from the heat,
Or keep her from the cold.
GORBO
Through yonder vale as I did pass
Descending from the hill,
I met a smirking bonny lass;
They call her Daffodil,
Whose presence as along she went
The pretty flowers did greet,
As though their heads they downward bent
With homage to her feet,
And all the shepherds that were nigh
From top of every hill
Unto the valleys loud did cry:
There goes sweet Daffodil!
BATTE
Ay, gentle shepherd, now with joy
Thou see my flocks doth fill;
That's she alone, kind shepherd boy,
Let's us to Daffodil!
The flower was also called jonquil, saffron lily, Lent lily and
narcissus. It was the large yellow narcissus, known as the Rose of
Sharon, so common in Palestine, of which Mohammed said: "He that hath
two cakes of bread, let him sell one of them for a flower of the
narcissus; for bread is the food of the body, but narcissus is the food
of the soul."
Narcissus, the most beautiful youth of Bœotia, was told that he would
live happily until he saw his own face. Loved by the nymphs, and
particularly Echo, he rejected their advances for he was immune to love
and admiration. One day, however, he beheld himself in a stream and
became so fascinated with his reflection that he pined to death gazing
at his own image.
For him the Naiads and the Dryads mourn,
Whom the sad Echo answers in her turn,
And now the sister nymphs prepare his urn;
When looking for his corpse, they only found
A rising stalk with yellow blossoms crowned.
In the center of the cup are to be found the tears of Narcissus!
Because the flower was consecrated to Ceres and to the Underworld
and to the Elysian Fields, the daffodil was one of the flowers that
Proserpine was gathering when "dusky Dis" carried her off--and the
myth also hints that the Earth purposely brought the asphodel forth
from the Underworld to entice the unsuspecting daughter of Ceres.
Sophocles associates the daffodil with the garlands of great goddesses:
"And ever, day by day, the narcissus with its beauteous clusters, the
ancient coronet of the mighty goddesses, bursts into bloom by heaven's
dew."[33]
[33] _Œdipus Coloneus._
[Illustration: GARDEN IN MACBETH'S CASTLE OF CAWDOR]
The delightful Dr. Forbes Watson writes of the daffodil like a painter,
with accurate observation and bright palette:
"In the daffodil the leaves and stems are of a full glaucous green,
a color not only cool and refreshing in itself, but strongly suggestive
of water, the most apparent source of freshness and constituting a most
delicious groundwork for the bright, lively yellow of the blossoms.
Now what sort of spathe would be likely to contribute best to this
remarkable effect of the flower? Should the colors be unusually
striking or the size increased, or what? Strange to say, in both
Daffodil and Pheasant's Eye (Poet's Narcissus) we find the spathe
dry and withered, shrivelled up like a bit of thin brown paper and
clinging round the base of the flowers. We cannot overlook it, and most
assuredly we were never meant to do so. Nothing could have been more
beautifully ordered than this contrast, there being just sufficient to
make us appreciate more fully that abounding freshness of life.
"It is a plant which affords a most beautiful contrast, a cool, watery
sheet of leaves with bright, warm flowers, yellow and orange, dancing
over the leaves like meteors over a marsh. The leaves look full of
watery sap, which is the life blood of plants and prime source of all
their freshness, just as the tissues of a healthy child look plump and
rosy from the warm blood circulating within.
"In its general expression the Poet's Narcissus seems a type of maiden
purity and beauty, yet warmed by a love-breathing fragrance; and yet
what innocence in the large soft eye which few can rival among the
whole tribe of flowers. The narrow, yet vivid fringe of red so clearly
seen amidst the whiteness suggests again the idea of purity and gushing
passion--purity with a heart which can kindle into fire."
III
"_Daisies Pied and Violets Blue_"
DAISY (_Bellis perennis_). Shakespeare often mentions the daisy. With
"violets blue" "lady-smocks all silver-white," and "cuckoo-buds of
every hue," it "paints the meadows with delight" in that delightful
spring-song in "Love's Labour's Lost."[34] Shakespeare also uses this
flower as a beautiful comparison for the delicate hand of _Lucrece_ in
"The Rape of Lucrece":[35]
Without the bed her other fair hand was
On the green coverlet; whose perfect white
Showed like an April daisy on the grass.
The daisy is among the flowers in the fantastic garlands that poor
_Ophelia_ wove before her death.[36]
[34] Act V, Scene II.
[35] Stanza 57.
[36] "Hamlet"; Act IV, Scene VII.
The botanical name _Bellis_ shows the origin of the flower. Belides,
a beautiful Dryad, trying to escape the pursuit of Vertumnus, god of
gardens and orchards, prayed to the gods for help; and they changed her
into the tiny flower. In allusion to this Rapin wrote:
When the bright Ram, bedecked with stars of gold,
Displays his fleece the Daisy will unfold,
To nymphs a chaplet and to beds a grace,
Who once herself had borne a virgin's face.
The daisy was under the care of Venus. It has been beloved by English
poets ever since Chaucer sang the praises of the day's eye--daisy.
Chaucer tells us, in what is perhaps the most worshipful poem ever
addressed to a flower, that he always rose early and went out to the
fields, or meadows, to pay his devotions to this "flower of flowers,"
whose praises he intended to sing while ever his life lasted, and he
bemoaned the fact, moreover, that he had not words at his command to do
it proper reverence.
Next to Chaucer in paying homage to the daisy comes Wordsworth with his
A nun demure, of lowly port;
Or sprightly maiden, of Love's court;
In thy simplicity the sport
Of all temptations;
Queen in crown of rubies drest,
A starveling in a scanty vest,
Are all, as seems to suit the best
My appellations.
A little cyclops with one eye
Staring to threaten and defy
That thought comes next--and instantly
The freak is over,
The shape will vanish--and behold,
A silver shield with boss of gold
That spreads itself some fairy bold
In fight to cover.
Bright flower! for by that name at last
When all my reveries are past
I call thee, and to that cleave fast,
Sweet, silent creature
That breathst with me the sun and air,
Do thou as thou art wont repair
My heart with gladness and a share
Of thy meek nature.
"Daisies smell-less yet most quaint" is a line from the flower-song in
"The Two Noble Kinsmen," written by John Fletcher and Shakespeare.[37]
[37] Act I, Scene I.
Milton speaks of
Meadows trim with daisies pied
and Dryden pays a tribute to which even Chaucer would approve:
And then a band of flutes began to play,
To which a lady sang a tirelay;
And still at every close she would repeat
The burden of the song--"The Daisy is so sweet!
The Daisy is so sweet!"--when she began
The troops of Knights and dames continued on.
The English daisy is "The wee, modest crimson-tipped flower," as
Burns has described it, and must not be confused with the daisy that
powders the fields and meadows in our Southern States with a snow of
white blossoms supported on tall stems. This daisy, called sometimes
the moon-daisy (_Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum_), is known in England as
the midsummer daisy and ox-eye. In France it is called marguerite and
paquerette. Being a midsummer flower, it is dedicated to St. John the
Baptist. It is also associated with St. Margaret and Mary Magdalen,
and from the latter it derives the names of maudlin and maudelyne. As
_Ophelia_ drowned herself in midsummer the daisies that are described
in her wreath are most probably marguerites and not the "day's eye" of
Chaucer.
Parkinson does not separate daisies very particularly. "They are
usually called in Latin," he tells us, "_Bellides_ and in English
Daisies. Some of them _Herba Margarita_ and _Primula veris_, as is
likely after the Italian names of Marguerita and _Flor di prima vera
gentile_. The French call them _Paquerettes_ and _Marguerites_; and the
fruitful sort, or those that have small flowers about the middle one,
_Margueritons_. Our English women call them Jack-an-Apes-on-Horseback."
The daisy that an Elizabethan poet quaintly describes as a Tudor
princess resembles the midsummer daisy rather than the "wee, modest,
crimson-tipped flower" of Burns:
About her neck she wears a rich wrought ruff
With double sets most brave and broad bespread
Resembling lovely lawn, or cambric stuff
Pinned up and prickt upon her yellow head.
Also Browne in his "Pastorals" seems to be thinking of this flower:
The Daisy scattered on each mead and down,
A golden tuft within a silver crown.
VIOLET (_Viola odorata_). The violet was considered "a choice flower
of delight" in English gardens. Shakespeare speaks of the violet on
many occasions and always with tenderness and deep appreciation of
its qualities. Violets are among the flowers that the frightened
Proserpine dropped from Pluto's ebon car--
Violets dim
And sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath.[38]
Thus in Shakespeare's opinion the violet out-sweetened both Juno,
majestic queen of heaven, and Venus, goddess of love and beauty.
How could he praise the violet more?
To throw a perfume on the violet
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
Shakespeare informs us in "King John."[39] With the utmost delicacy of
perfection he describes _Titania's_ favorite haunt as
a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows.[40]
In truth, the tiny flower seems to nod among its leaves.
Shakespeare makes the elegant _Duke_ in "Twelfth Night," who is
lounging nonchalantly on his divan, compare the music he hears to the
breeze blowing upon a bank of violets[41] (see page 44).
[38] "The Winter's Tale"; Act IV, Scene III.
[39] Act IV, Scene II.
[40] "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; Act II, Scene II.
[41] Act I, Scene I.
Shelley held the same idea that the delicious perfume of flowers is
like the softest melody:
The snowdrop and then the violet
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet;
And there was mixed with fresh color, sent
From the turf like the voice and the instrument.
And the hyacinth, purple and white and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music, so delicate, soft and intense
It was felt like an odor within the sense.
_Ophelia_ laments that she has no violets to give to the court ladies
and lords, for "they withered" when her father died, she tells us.
Shakespeare also associates violets with melancholy occasions. _Marina_
enters in "Pericles" with a basket of flowers on her arm, saying:[42]
The yellows, blues,
The purple violets and marigolds
Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave
While summer days do last.
[42] Act IV, Scene II.
On another occasion, with a broad sweeping gesture, Shakespeare mentions
The violets that strew
The green lap of the new-come Spring.
In "Sonnet XCIX" he writes:
The forward violet thus did I chide:
Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal the sweet that smells
If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
[Illustration: SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON]
Bacon deemed it most necessary "to know what flowers and plants do best
perfume the air," and he thought "that which above all others yields
the sweetest smell is the violet, and next to that the musk-rose." (See
page 44.)
"Perhaps of all Warwickshire flowers," writes a native of Shakespeare's
country, "none are so plentiful as violets; our own little churchyard
of Whitechurch is sheeted with them. They grow in every hedgebank until
the whole air is filled with their fragrance. The wastes near Stratford
are sometimes purple as far as the eyes can see with the flowers of
_viola canina_. Our English violets are twelve in number. The plant is
still used in medicine and acquired of late a notoriety as a suggested
cancer cure; and in Shakespeare's time was eaten raw with onions and
lettuces and also mingled in broth and used to garnish dishes, while
crystallized violets are not unknown in the present day."
For the beauty of its form, for the depth and richness of its color,
for the graceful drooping of its stalk and the nodding of its head, for
its lovely heart-shaped leaf and above all for its delicious perfume,
the violet is admired. Then when we gaze into its tiny face and note
the delicacy of its veins, which Shakespeare so often mentions, we gain
a sense of its deeper beauty and significance.
Dr. Forbes Watson observed:
"I give one instance of Nature's care for the look of the stamens and
pistils of a flower. In the blossom of the Scented Violet the stamens
form, by their convergence, a little orange beak. At the end of this
beak is the summit of the pistil, a tiny speck of green, but barely
visible to the naked eye. Yet small as it is, it completes the color of
the flower, by softening the orange, and we can distinctly see that if
this mere point were removed, there would be imperfection for the want
of it."
St. Francis de Sales, a contemporary of Shakespeare, gave a lovely
description of the flower when he said:
"A true widow is in the Church as a March Violet, shedding around an
exquisite perfume by the fragrance of her devotion and always hidden
under the ample leaves of her lowliness and by her subdued coloring,
showing the spirit of her mortification. She seeks untrodden and
solitary places."
The violet's qualities of lowliness, humility, and sweetness have
always appealed to poets. The violet is also beloved because it is
one of the earliest spring flowers. Violets are, like primroses and
cowslips,
The first to rise
And smile beneath Spring's wakening skies,
The courier of a band of coming flowers.
The violet was also an emblem of constancy. At the floral games,
instituted by Clemence Isaure at Toulouse in the Fourteenth Century,
the prize was a golden violet, because the poetess had once sent a
violet to her Knight as a token of faithfulness. With the Troubadours
the violet was a symbol of constancy. In "A Handful of Pleasant
Delights," a popular song-book published in Elizabeth's reign in 1566,
there is a poem called "A Nosegay always Sweet for Lovers to send
Tokens of Love at New Year's tide, or for Fairings, as they in their
minds shall be disposed to write." This poem contains a verse to the
violet:
Violet is for faithfulness
Which in me shall abide;
Hoping likewise that from your heart
You will not let it slide,
And will continue in the same,
As you have now begun;
And then forever to abide
Then you my heart have won.
The violet has always held a loved place in the English garden. Gerard
writes quaintly in his "Herbal":
"The Black, or Purple Violets, or March Violets, of the garden have
a great prerogative above all others, not only because the mind
conceiveth a certain pleasure and recreation by smelling and handling
of those most odoriferous flowers, but also for the very many by these
Violets receive ornament and comely grace; for there be made of them
garlands for the head, nosegays and poesies, which are delightful to
look on and pleasant to smell to, speaking nothing of their appropriate
virtues; yea, gardens themselves receive by these the greatest ornament
of all chiefest beauty and most gallant grace; and the recreation of
the mind, which is taken thereby, cannot but be very good and honest;
for they admonish and stir up a man to that which is comely and honest;
for flowers through their beauty, variety of color and exquisite form
do bring to a liberal and great mind the remembrance of honesty,
comeliness and all kinds of virtue."
Proserpine was gathering violets among other flowers in the fields of
Enna in Sicily when Pluto carried her off. Shakespeare touched upon the
story most exquisitely, through the lips of _Perdita_, as quoted above.
Another Greek myth accounts for the Greek word for the violet, which is
_ion_. It seems when, in order to protect her from the persecutions of
Juno, Jove transformed lovely Europa into a white heifer whom he named
Io, he caused sweet violets to spring up from the earth wherever the
white cow placed her lips; and from her name, Io, the flower acquired
the name _ion_.
The Athenians adored the flower. Tablets were engraved with the word
_ion_ and set up everywhere in Athens; and of all sobriquets the
citizens preferred that of "Athenian crowned with violets."
The Persians also loved the violet and made a delicious wine from it.
A sherbet flavored with violet blossoms is served in Persia and Arabia
to-day at feasts; and Mohammedans say: "The excellence of the violet is
as the excellence of El Islam above all other religions."
IV
_"Lady-smocks all Silver White" and "Cuckoo Buds
of Yellow Hue"_
LADY-SMOCK (_Cardamine pratensis_). The lovely little spring song in
"Love's Labour's Lost"[43] with the line,
Lady-smocks all silver white,
has immortalized this little flower of the English meadows, but little
known in our country. The lady-smock is very common in England in
early spring. Properly speaking it should be Our Lady's-smock, as it
is one of the many plants dedicated to the Virgin Mary and bearing her
name. The list is a long one, including Lady's-slippers, Lady's-bower,
Lady's-cushion, Lady's-mantle, Lady's-laces, Lady's-looking-glass,
Lady's-garters, Lady's-thimble, Lady's-hair (maidenhair fern),
Lady's-seal, Lady's-thistle, Lady's-bedstraw, Lady's-fingers,
Lady's-gloves, and so on. These flowers, originally dedicated to Venus,
Juno, and Diana in Greek and Roman mythology and to Freya and Bertha
in Northern lore and legend, were gradually transferred to the Virgin
with the spread of Christianity. The Lady's-smock takes its name from
the fancied, but far-fetched, resemblance to a smock. It is said, by
way of explanation, that when these flowers are seen in great quantity
they suggest the comparison of linen smocks bleaching on the green
meadow. Other names for the plant are Cuckoo-flower, Meadow-cress,
Spinks, and Mayflower; and in Norfolk the _Cardamine pratensis_
is called Canterbury-bells. The petals have a peculiarly soft and
translucent quality with a faint lilac tinge. Shakespeare describes the
flower as "silver white," an epithet that has puzzled many persons.
However, one ardent Shakespeare lover has made a discovery:
"Gather a lady-smock as you tread the rising grass in fragrant May,
and although in individuals the petals are sometimes cream color,
as a rule the flower viewed in the hand is lilac--pale, but purely
and indisputably lilac. Where then is the silver-whiteness? It is
the meadows, remember, that are painted, when, as often happens, the
flower is so plentiful as to hide the turf, and most particularly if
the ground be a slope and the sun be shining from behind us, all is
changed; the flowers are lilac no longer; the meadow is literally
'silver-white.' So it is always--Shakespeare's epithets are like
prisms. Let them tremble in the sunshine and we discover that it is he
who knows best."
The beautiful song begins:
When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver white,
And cuckoo buds of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he:
Cuckoo,
Cuckoo, Cuckoo--or word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.
[43] Act V, Scene II.
CUCKOO BUDS (_Ranunculus_). It is quite possible that in "cuckoo buds
of yellow hue" Shakespeare meant the blossoms of the buttercup or
kingcup (called by the country people of Warwickshire horse-blobs).
Some authorities claim that cuckoo-buds is intended to represent the
lesser celandine, of which Wordsworth was so fond that he wrote three
poems to it. Others call cuckoo-buds _carmine pratensis_; but that
could hardly be possible because Shakespeare speaks of "lady-smocks
all silver white" in one line and "cuckoo buds of yellow hue" in the
succeeding line.
There is much confusion in the identification of lady-smocks,
cuckoo-buds, cuckoo-flowers, and crow-flowers, for they are more or
less related.
Gerard says: "Our Lady-Smock is also called the cuckoo-flower because
it flowers in April and May when the cuckoo doth begin to sing her
pleasant notes without stammering."
V
_Anemones and "Azured Harebells"_
ANEMONE (_Anemone purpurea striata stellata_). The anemone is described
in "Venus and Adonis" very minutely:[44]
By this, the boy that by her side lay kill'd,
Was melted like a vapor from her sight,
And in his blood that on the ground lay spill'd,
A purple flower sprung up chequer'd with white.
Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood,
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.
[44] Verse 195.
Adonis, the beautiful youth, beloved of Venus, was wounded by a boar,
to which he had given chase. Venus found him as he lay dying on the
grass. To make him immortal she changed him into an anemone, or
windflower. Naturally the flower was dedicated to Venus.
Bion sang:
Alas! the Paphian! fair Adonis slain!
Tears plenteous as his blood she pours amain,
But gentle flowers are born and bloom around
From every drop that falls upon the ground.
Where streams his blood, there blushing springs a Rose
And where a tear has dropped a windflower blows.
Pliny asserted the anemone only blooms when the wind blows.
The flower was associated with illness in the days of the Egyptians and
also during the Middle Ages, when there was also a superstition that
the first anemone gathered would prove a charm against disease. The
first spring blossom was, therefore, eagerly searched for, delightedly
plucked, and carefully guarded. No token of affection was more prized
by a loved one going off on a journey than the gift of an anemone. An
old ballad has the lines:
The first Spring-blown Anemone she in his doublet wove,
To keep him safe from pestilence wherever he should rove.
Anemones were greatly valued in Elizabethan gardens. Indeed it was
a fad to grow them. Parkinson distinguishes the family of anemones
as "the wild and the tame, or manured, both of them nourished up in
gardens." He classifies them still further as "those that have broader
leaves and those that have thinner, or more jagged, leaves"; and then
again into those "that bear single flowers and those that bear double
flowers." The wild kinds included "all the Pulsatillas, or Pasque
(Easter) flowers." Parkinson mentions many varieties. He describes
the "tame" anemones as white, yellow, purple, crimson, scarlet,
blush gredeline (between peach color and violet), orange-tawny,
apple-blossom, rose-color, and many others. From his list we can
have no doubt that Shakespeare's flower was one of the purple star
anemones--the _Anemone purpurea striata stellata_, "whose flowers have
many white lines and stripes through the leaves." Parkinson's name is
"the purple-striped Anemone."
Of recent years anemones have again become the fashion.