Flores

“ Zeitschrift für deut. Altertum (vol. xxi.) contains a Rhenish version; the Scandinavian Flores Saga ok Blankiflùr, ed. E. Kölbing (Halle, 1896) ; the 13th-century version of Konrad Fleck, Flore und Blanscheflur, ed. E. Sommer (Leipzig, 1846) ”

“ Some of them watch above the flower-roots, and keep them fresh and strong; others gather the clear drops that trickle from the damp rocks, and form a little spring, which, growing ever larger, rises to the light above, and gushes forth in some green field or lonely forest; where the wild-birds come to drink, and wood-flowers spread their thirsty leaves above the clear, cool waves, as they go dancing away, carrying joy and freshness wherever they go. Others shape the bright jewels into lovely forms, and make the good-luck pennies which we give to mortals whom we love. ”

“ When she left its shelter at early dawn to bathe in some sparkling stream, or seek for sweet berries in the thickets, the Flower-Elves flocked to greet her; wild roses gave her their bloom for her oval cheeks, and the violets scented her sunny hair. Wherever she passed, the moss grew a brighter green, and she had but to breathe on a gnarled old trunk, and the softest feathery fronds came to hide its ugliness. The creatures of the forest were all her friends, and took pride, as we did, in her loveliness. ”

“ There are the flowers of simple loves, the flowers of the young wife who will dry the blue lavender to scent her coarse sheets. And in this garden grows also the flower of the rondel—the humble gilliflower with its simple perfume. There is also the faithful box, each leaf of which is a small mirror of azure, and the hollyhock in which the sweet and pure flame of melancholy corollas burns; they are the flowers of religion vowed to silence and austerity.
And I love also the flora of the meadows: the meadow-sweet swayed by the breezes, rocked by the murmur of the brook. ”

“ Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring - that delicious commingling of the perfume of arbutus, the odor of pines, and the snow-soaked soil just warming into life? Those who know the flower only as it is sold in the city streets, tied with wet, dirty string into tight bunches, withered and forlorn, can have little idea of the joy of finding the pink, pearly blossoms freshly opened among the withered leaves of oak and chestnut, moss, and pine needles in which they nestle close to the cold earth in the leafless, windy northern forest. ”

“ In the evening we drove to the orange grove, where three thousand lofty trees are ranged in avenues, literally bending under the weight of their golden fruit and snowy blossom. I never saw a more beautiful sight. Each tree is perfect, and lofty as a forest tree. The ground under their broad shadows is strewed with thousands of oranges, dropping in their ripeness, and covered with the white fragrant blossoms. ”

“ God never duplicates. The wild rose is a simple flower, possessing but five petals, held securely in the golden chalice of pollen-laden stamens. Nothing could possibly be more liable of duplication than this quaint flower of simple garb, yet of all the wild-rose blooms gathered by lovers’ hands and pressed to maidens’ lips, of all the wild-rose blooms that grace the old-fashioned gardens and trellis the fences of the country roads with their picturesque, sublime simplicity, no two are alike. ”

“ The young foliage, of a clear brilliant green, is gayly decked with the long clusters of peculiarly fresh pink blossoms, which seem like the very incarnation of the spirit of Spring, producing a certain eblouissement, which quickens our sense into an anticipation of beauty on every side. ”

“ They loved best to cross the meadows in front of the house, to a forest, where the woods were more open, and where trees of every variety, cast their shadows upon the green turf, and wild flowers grew upon every hillock, and peeped out from every mossy glade. There were little wildernesses of honey-suckles, too, scattered through the woods, and long, pale green fern leaves, fit for a fairy to sway to and fro upon; and there were vines of wild grapes, with branches so strong, that they often made swings of them. ”

“ Fill a tall jar with spires of larkspur of the purest blue known to garden flowers. Unless the sun shines fully on them they seem to swallow light; mingle with them some stalks of white foxgloves, Canterbury bells, or surround them with Madonna lilies, a fringe of spirea, or the slender Deutzia gracilis, more frequently seen in florists' windows than in the garden, [Pg 354] and a new meaning is given the blue flower; the black shadows disappear from its depth and sky reflections replace them. ”

“ Wild flowers alone never become commonplace. The white wood-sorrel at the foot of the oak, the violet in the hedge of the vale, the thyme on the wind-swept downs, they were as fresh this year as last, as dear to-day as twenty years since, even dearer, for they grow now, as it were, in the earth we have made for them of our hopes, our prayers, our emotions, our thoughts. ”

“ I forsook human life for floral, and in my renouncing I gained much. In my garden there grew a single fragile flower, orchid-like in glory, but of a species quite different to any I had ever chanced upon before. ”

“ Heaped in the hollow of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust and to the rabbit’s tread.
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.
Where are the flowers, the young fair flowers, that lately sprang and stood,
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?
Alas! they all are in their graves; the gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lonely beds, with the fair and good of ours. ”

“ All the lilies in the garden had done flowering, but these, more pure and more luxuriant, through shade and shelter, were then in their full perfection, and filled the air with their delightful fragrance. The children called them sister's lilies, because when she was a child she had planted them. We generally brought pieces of bread with us, to eat with our fruit, and the wilderness being our favorite retreat, we played there at all times in the day. ”

“ Droop all the flowers in my garden,
⁠All their fair heads hang low;
For rose, their fairest companion,
⁠Never again will they know.
Bring me no flowers for wearing,
⁠Take these strange buds away,
For I cannot now have the fairest—
⁠My rose that has died to-day.
What has blighted my blossom?
⁠Stricken it down with death. ”

“ She was the earth in which his strange flowers grew. But she herself wondered at the flowers produced of her. He was so strange to her, so different from herself. What next would he ask of her, what new blossom would she rear in him then. He seemed to grow and flower involuntarily. She merely helped to produce him. ”

“ So Jesus said, "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow."
Who makes them grow? How do they get those delicate roots, those graceful green leaves, those sweet-smelling lovely flowers?
Every spring we see the daisies and the buttercups, the wild geraniums, the primroses and bluebells, and hundreds of other flowers, which come up in the fields and hedges, without our knowing that they were there! ”

“ Myriads of blossoms, white and yellow, red and purple and blue, sprang up from their nests of dainty green grasses and leaves, to swing in the passing breeze and shake the perfume from their petals with which to scent the balmy air. Roses and lilies, violets and daisies, pinks and cowslips, and a thousand other flowers made the hedges and gardens and meadows and forests appear gay and beautiful and very sweet. ”

“ From the old-fashioned garden beyond comes the scent of the roses—all old-world roses, as befits the garden, but none the less beautiful for that. The rose céleste and the white rose unique, the cabbage rose and the perfect rose of a hundred leaves, all lend their sweetness to the air ”

“ The attention of anyone whose thoughts are attuned to flowers must at once be arrested by the colouring of this splendid plant, for its large funnel-shaped blossoms are of the rich gentian blue, striped with green bands, and as it grows not in the bog itself, but on the close-adjoining banks of heather, it is easily accessible. Yet fortunately, in the locality of which I am speaking, it seems to be untouched by those who cross the Common. ”

“ Among the pleasant sights of this mid-summertide, perhaps the pleasantest of all is the great thicket of wild Roses growing within the wire network that bounds the tennis-lawn on the garden side. The east, shining full upon it every morning, brings forth hundreds of new-blown Roses. Very often, as you pass into their sweet presence from under the Plane trees, the air is redolent of a subtle perfume—not always, though, nor every day, for Roses are capricious of their scent. ”

“ Certain flowers are now in bloom, but you never find a mourning cloak or a hunter, a question mark or a painted lady fluttering about them. The bees are in the willow blooms and the alder catkins after pollen. The maples are in bloom. You can find hepaticas and violets, chickweed, crocus, snowdrop, and, I dare say, dandelions in blossom, and almost every day some new shrub{147} or shy herb sends perfumed invitation out on the messenger winds. ”

“ Flora, who was imaginative and poetical, had drawn in her mind so touching, a picture of the pale widow and her golden-haired cherubs, had rehearsed to herself so often the scene of the meeting, that she had worked herself into a state of eager impatience. Unable to settle steadily to anything, she fluttered from room to room, now altering the arrangement of the flowers with which she had adorned the widow's pretty boudoir, now bringing some elegant trifle of her own to add to the beauty of the effect. ”

“ Flora's unfinished embroidery still remained in the frame, with the needle in the last stitch of a blue forget-me-not. Over the mirror was a cluster of blush-roses she had made. On the wall was a spray of sea-moss she had pressed and surrounded with a garland of small shells. By the door was a vine she had transplanted from the woods; and under a tree opposite was a turf seat where she used to sit sketching the cottage, and Tulee, and Thistle, and baskets of wild-flowers she had gathered. ”

“ Through the dreary months, when they might have dwelt among fair Southern flowers, beneath a smiling sky, they toiled in the dark and silent earth, filling the hearts of the gentle Flower Spirits with grateful love, seeking no reward but the knowledge of their own good deeds, and the joy they always bring. ”

“ No one could write "blown-plants, honey-flowing" without a deep and sophisticated love of flowers.
Every Anglo-Saxon gentleman had a garth, or garden, for pleasure, and an ort-garth for vegetables. [Pg 7] In the garth the best loved flower was the lily, which blossomed beside the rose, sunflower, marigold, gilliflower, violet, periwinkle, honeysuckle, daisy, peony, and bay-tree. ”

“ The rain falling upon the just and the unjust makes the heart of the husbandman leap for joy, at the prospect of a bountiful harvest, causes the foliage and the gardens to put on a more beautiful green, the lilies of the valley and the rose in the garden ("the transient stars of earth") to unfold themselves more beautifully. ”

“ The strong shoots of last year will produce a large cluster of flowers from almost every eye, and as a profuse flowering double white climbing rose we have seen none to surpass it. It grows freely, the foliage and wood pure green, leaves much nerved. ”

“ Then into a cheerful place they went, where were many groups of flowers, among whose leaves sat the child Elves, and learned from their flower-books all that Fairy hands had written there. Some studied how to watch the tender buds, when to spread them to the sunlight, and when to shelter them from rain; how to guard the ripening seeds, and when to lay them in the warm earth or send them on the summer wind to far off hills and valleys, where other Fairy hands would tend and cherish them, till a sisterhood of happy flowers sprang up to beautify and gladden the lonely spot where they had fallen. ”

“ I said that nothing grew on the trellises by the poplars but crimson roses, but I was not quite right, for in many places the wild flowers had crept into the garden from without; lush green briony, with green-white blossoms, that grows p. 5so fast, one could almost think that we see it grow, and deadly nightshade, La bella donna, O! so beautiful; red berry, and purple, yellow-spiked flower, and deadly, cruel-looking, dark green leaf, all growing together in the glorious days of early autumn. ”

“ Not the stiff standard rose tree of an English garden, with its few precious blossoms, to be looked at from a distance and admired with respectful gravity. No: in this garden the roses grow as they might have grown in Eden—untrained, unpruned, in enormous bushes covered entirely by magnificent blossoms, each bloom of which would have won a prize at a rose-show. ”

“ In a field near this garden there grew a green shrub which at the top expanded into luxuriant branches, giving shade at mid-day to man and beast. But from the lower branches, instead of broad green leaves, grew long sharp spines. One summer day, these spines said to each other, in their short and broken speech, for they could not wave and rustle in the wind like the leaves,—
"We are not worthy to live on the same tree with the beautiful forest leaves which wave in the fresh air above us. ”