Flowers

“ A lovely night wind is blowing across my garden and bringing me congratulations from all my flower family. Flowers are a part of love and the wooing of it, and they understand. I am waiting for the light to go out behind the tall trees over which the moon is stealthily sinking. ”

“ There are many flowers, which in the early morn, seem to possess little interest or beauty, for their bloom is closed; but when the sun gets up, and they feel its genial heat, the leaf expands, and the blossom opens, sweet in its fragrance, and lovely in its colouring and form. ”

“ The bright- hued blossoms seemed to make her oblivious for a moment of the darkness and corruption to which she was so soon to consign her priceless treasure. The child's sweet face, even in death, reminded me that the flowers of the field and garden, however lovely, are all outshone by human beauty. What floral glory of the wild-wood, or what queen of the parterre, in all the pride of bloom, laughing in the sun-light or dancing in the breeze, hath a charm that could vie for a single moment with the soft and holy lustre of that motionless and faded human lily? ”

“ I know a garden of flowers—flowers lovely and multiform as the orchids of far, exotic worlds—as the flowers of manifold petal, whose colours change as if by enchantment in the alter nation of the triple suns; flowers like tiger lilies from the garden of Satan; like the paler lilies of paradise, or the amaranths on whose perfect and immortal beauty the seraphim so often ponder; flowers fierce and splendid like the crimson or golden flowers of fire; flowers bright and cold as the crystal flowers of snow; flowers whereof there is no likeness in any world of any sun ”

“ The humblest flower that grows is visited by our messengers, and often blooms in fragrant beauty, unknown, unloved by all save Fairy friends, who seek to fill the spirits with all sweet and gentle virtues, that they may not be useless on the earth; for the noblest mortals stoop to learn of flowers. ”

“ The Greeks called flowers the Festival of the eye: and so they are: but they are something else, and something better.
A flower is not a flower alone, A thousand sanctities invest it.
Flowers not only touch the heart; they also elevate the soul. They bind us not entirely to earth; though they make earth delightful. They attract our thoughts downward to the richly embroidered ground only to raise them up again to heaven. If the stars are the scriptures of the sky, the flowers are the scriptures of the earth. ”

“ The bunch of flowers, hastily put together by her who gathered them, speaks as plainly of affection, although not in so delicate tones, as the most tastefully-arranged bouquet. But who desires to be presented with a nosegay of artificial flowers? Who can abide dead blossoms or violent discords of color? Freshness, sweetness, and an approach to harmony, that shall bring to mind the living, growing plants, and the bountiful Nature from whose embrace flowers are born, the acceptable gift must have. ”

“ Where are the flowers, the fair young 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 lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. ”

“ Nor stop me these wild flowers to gather!
They droop at my touch, and decay.
I think of the flowers, that are blooming
In beauty unfading above,
The wings of the angels perfuming,
Who fly down on errands of love. ”

“ The flowers that blossom by the wayside of life are less beautiful when we have torn them leaf by leaf asunder, to analyze their properties, and to determine their classes, than when we first inhale their perfume, and delight in their lovely tints, heedless of all save the enjoyment which they impart. ”

“ And this bowl of wall-flowers before me now—these old-fashioned, homely, shapeless, intimately fascinating flowers, with their faint ancient fragrance, their antique faded beauty, their symbolisation of the delicate and contented beauty of old age—seem to me fit for the altar of whatever might be my dearest god.
Why should flowers possess this emotional force? It is a force which is largely independent of association and quite abstracted from direct vital use. Flowers are purely impersonal, they subserve neither of the great primary ends of life. They concern us even less than the sunset. ”

“ Gladly would I feel assured that, in some future years,—when I shall have done with earthly flowers, and you will be engaged in the busy scenes and arduous duties of mature life,—the import of these leaves may from time to time arise to your memory, in all its dewy freshness, like the fragrance which the summer-breeze wafts after us, from the lilies and violets we have passed and left far behind us, in our morning rambles. ”

“ Long, long, long ago seems it to be indeed, when we now remember it, the Time we first pulled the primroses on the sunny braes, wondering in our first blissful emotions of beauty at the leaves with a softness all their own—a yellowness nowhere else so vivid—"the bright consummate flower" so starlike to our awakened imagination among the lowly grass—lovely indeed to our admiring eyes as any one of all the stars that, in their turn, did seem themselves like flowers in the blue fields of heaven! ”

“ At once, the flowers become a world of beauty, life, and thought. They are our kin, sons of the same parent Earth, and dreamers of strangely similar dreams. The Palm tree over them becomes a great mystery of power and grace lifting it to the realm of gods. The flowers, like little mortals, wonder at the things they see about them. ”

“ How they come back to us, the beautiful hackneyed lines, and flash into our memories with new significance of meaning when we chance suddenly upon a meadow bordered with these the most gorgeous of our wild flowers. ”

“ The flowers of every hue,
Some shy, half-opened bud will holds
Its drop of morning's dew.
Sweeter with every sunlit hour
The trembling sphere has grown,
Till all the fragrance of the flower
Becomes at last its own. ”

“ It is, among familiar plants, the most submissive, the most docile, the most tractable and the most attentive plant of all that we meet on life’s long way. It bears flowers impregnated through and through with the thought and will of man: flowers already human, so to speak. ”

“ The slow hard tears,
Could break new ground, and wake
A new strange garden to blossom for your sake,
And leave me here alone,
In the old garden that was once our own?
How should I learn to bear
Our garden's pleasant ways and pleasant air,
Her flowers, her fruits, her lily, her rose and thorn,
When only in a picture these appear—
These, once alive, and always over-dear?
Ah—think again: the rose you used to wear
Must still be more than other roses be
The flower of flowers. Ah, pity, pity me! ”

“ And moisten every leaf with balmy dew;
But now thy rich luxuriant bloom is fled,
Thy foliage wears a pale autumnal hue;
Too soon thy glowing colours have decay'd,
Like thee the flowers of pleasure smile and fade. ”

“ It is a pleasant pastime, when wearied with toil you go forth for a time among your flowers and search for the buds, or examine the newly-opened flower. How it rests you!
It is a pleasant pastime, when the labors of the day are over, and the sun is throwing long shadows from the west, you take watering-pot in hand, and shower the refreshing spray upon your plants, cleansing them from the dust, and cooling them after the heat. How they thrive, and bud and bloom! ”

“ Flora, with a full lap, scattering knowledge and flowers together; everything good and sweet seems to come out of flowers, up to the very highest thoughts of the soul, and we carry them daily to the very threshold of the other world. ”

“ Most justly, then, may we call the Christian religion a garden of flowers, that are delightful to the sight and most salutary to those who breathe the air impregnated by their fragrance. Our Lady herself was a flower distinguished for beauty and excellence above all other flowers—a flower of incomparable fragrance, possessed of the power of producing many other flowers: Hortus conclusus, soror mea, sponsa—'Thou,' says the sacred Spouse in the Canticles, 'art a garden enclosed:' a garden all studded with the most magnificent flowers that can be produced. ”

“ The greatest joy which a garden can yield is a feeling of restfulness and peace, a feeling which no garden of staring beds and ostentatious splendour can afford, but which is yielded—as by nothing else in the world—by a garden of happy, homely, old-fashioned flowers. ”

“ At the feet of the trees are the flowers of the seasons in their order. Here and there the precious dark earth is visible, adding a charm to the pale green stems and leaves and the splendid or thoughtful hues of blossom. ”

“ Is it with thy kisses or thy tears?
For never rain or dew
Such fragrance drew
From plant or flower; the very doubt endears
My sadness ever new,
The sighs I breathe, the tears I shed, for thee.
P. B. Shelley. There grew pied Wind-flowers and Violets,
Daisies, those pearl'd Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flowers that never set;
Faint Oxlips; tender Blue-bells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother's face with Heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears. ”

“ Every leaf that falls is pushed from its hold by a bud awaiting the mystic order to unfold itself in spring; every flower lives but to form its seeds. All through the centuries the spirits of the flowers and the wild things have been growing more beautiful in the knowledge of their service. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For look you, who cares for flowers where flowers always are? In my country, after the iron winter breaks and the sun drives away the long night, the first blossoms twinkling on the melting ice-edge are things of joy, and we look, and look again. ”

“ Flowers that cannot be painted by brush or in coloring to do justice to the delicate waxlike originals. Flowers that seem like delicate souls wrapped in somber lifeless bodies, trying to gain expression through their beautiful colorings and evanescent perfume in the dry atmosphere of their monotonous existence, out in the great [33] stillness of the arid spaces with only the midnight blue of the heavens to caress them, and the dew of the night zephyrs to kiss them when the torrid sun has gone. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The great parterre of flowers presents a brilliant sight, showing all the rich and gorgeous hues, so skilfully arranged as to look in the distance like a silken robe of many colors spread upon the earth. These winding walks, ornamental buildings, ferneries, azalea, camellia, rhododendron, and heath "houses" afford every opportunity for the botanist to study the habits of plants, the lover of flowers to feast on their beauty, and the poor man and his family an agreeable, pleasant, and rational enjoyment. ”

“ I can't make out why new flowers don't keep appearing. I could offer a few suggestions. I dream of flowers sometimes—great banks of bloom rising up out of crystal rivers, in deep gorges, full of sunshine and scent. How nice it is to be idle! ”

“ Why has the beneficent Creator scattered over the face of the earth such a profusion of beautiful flowers—flowers by the thousand and million, in every land—from the tiny snowdrop that gladdens the chill spring of the north, to the gorgeous magnolia that flaunts in the sultry regions of the tropics? ”

“ The florist may delight in this: the true lover of flowers never will. He who has taken lessons from nature, who has observed the real purpose and operation of flowers; how they flush forth from the brightness of the earth's being, as the melody rises up from among the moved strings of the instrument; how the wildness of their pale colors passes over her, like the evidence of a various emotion ”

“ Here's flowers for you, Hot lavender, mint, savory, majoram, The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun, And with him rises weeping these are flowers Of middle summer, and I think they are given To men of middle age. ”

“ Thou becomest distracted whenever thou seest a flower, O my Heart! Thou thinkest that the flowers that look on all men can resemble her eye!
1113. Her arm is as the bamboo; her body is as the tender leaf; her smile is a very pearl; the sweetest of odours is in her breath ”

“ Flowers smell the sweetest and look the loveliest of all earthly things, and most men and woman throughout the World dearly love them, and hope to dwell beyond the grave where "Everlasting Spring abides, and NEVER WITHERING FLOWERS". ”

“ I like the reds and blues of the other flowers, too. They seem brighter than ever to-day. Sometimes I sit all day and look at them.”
[143]
“Oh! we have a rainbow this afternoon. It always looks to me like a great garden of flowers stretched in bands across the sky. I like to think that its yellow and red and blue are made up of flowers like these in our garden here.”
“Do you see that colour next to the green? I love it; it is so dark and deep. Many times I have wished we might have a flower on earth just like it.” ”

“ They say there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years. ”

“ Like the flowers of the field and the garden, they are “all rooted and grounded” in the soil of the same earth; they are warmed by the same sun, refreshed by the same air, and watered by the same dews. They each derive nourishment, growth, and increase from the same life-giving Source. As the flower puts forth its leaves and petals, adorns the place which it inhabits with its beauty, and possesses an internal system of qualities, whereby it is enabled to bring forth its seed or fruit in the appointed season; so does the Christian. ”