Lilies of the Field

“ It is thought by some that the "lilies of the field," spoken of in the seventh chapter of Matthew, are the red lily described by Pliny. The white lilies have long been considered the symbol of purity and were often used by the great masters in the pictures of the Annunciation, in which they were represented as held by the Angel Gabriel. How appropriate is the white lily, with its glossy and pure white petals for the decoration of Easter time!
The slender stalk of the Yellow Lily arises from a scaly bulbous and thickened underground stem, growing to a height of from two to five feet. ”

“ MABEL'S DREAM.
"Listen, then: A little girl went out one day in search of strawberries. She went into a wide green field that was starred all over with dandelions, and clusters of wild lilies hanging like bells around their stems, and violets, and blue-eyed grass.
"There was not a living being in this place except the birds, and little fishes in the brook; for through the long grass all around the field ran a stream of clearest water over a dark-brown, pebbly bed.
"Rising on every side, so as to shut the field in by itself, were hills closely covered with trees and vines. ”

“ Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - Nova Scotia to Georgia, westward beyond the Mississippi.
Not our gorgeous lilies that brighten the low-lying meadows in early summer with pendent, swaying bells; possibly not a true lily at all was chosen to illustrate the truth which those who listened to the Sermon on the Mount, and we, equally anxious, foolishly overburdened folk of to-day, so little comprehend.
"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ”

“ The blighted garden, lonely nest.
Reach down in love, O God above!
And fold my darling to thy breast.
{95} HEIGHO, MY DEARIE
A MOONBEAM floateth from the skies,
Whispering: “Heigho, my dearie;
I would spin a web before your eyes—
A beautiful web of silver light
Wherein is many a wondrous sight
Of a radiant garden leagues away,
Where the softly tinkling lilies sway
And the snow-white lambkins are at play—
Heigho, my dearie!” ”

“ I see a large, fair garden, filled with shrubbery and flowers; there are fountains and velvety hillocks and silver lakes and embowered nooks. A soft, dim, golden light broods over the quiet spot."
"Yes, that is the light which shines through the Moon from the bright side; but it is very faint," said the Dream-Fairies.
"And I see the little babies asleep," continued Sweet-One-Darling. "They are lying in the embowered nooks, near the fountains, upon the velvety hillocks, amid the flowers, under the trees, and upon the broad leaves of the lilies in the silver lakes. ”

“ Its bloom, which comes in clusters, has, singly, but the short life of a day.
With delight I found this dear lily of my far-away childhood in one of these old-time borders.
It is perfectly hardy, and wonderfully prolific in bulbs. My garden has now scant room for all its Yellow Lilies, and this after friends and neighbors have kindly relieved me of some of this "embarrassment of riches." ”

“ As she sat there the scent of the lilies came more strongly than ever, and now with a curious effect. It was to the girl as if the fragrance were twining and winding about her and impelling her like leashes. All at once an impulse of yielding which was really freedom came to her. Why in the world should she not cross the little north yard, step over the low hedge, and go into that lily-garden? She knew that it would be beautiful there. She looked forth into the crystalline light and the soft plumy shade,—she would go over into the Ware garden. ”

“ Here, too, we find the best of the garden-meadows full of lilies. A dry spot a little way back from the margin of a silver fir lily-garden makes a glorious camp-ground, especially where the slope is toward the east with a view of the distant peaks along the summit of the Range. The tall lilies are brought forward most impressively like visitors by the light of your camp-fire and the nearest of the trees with their whorled branches tower above you like larger lilies and the sky seen through the garden-opening seems one vast meadow of white lily stars. ”

“ This famous lily is distributed over the sunny portions of the sugar-pine woods, never in large garden companies like pardalinum, but widely scattered, standing up to the waist in dense ceanothus and manzanita chaparral, waving its lovely flowers above the blooming wilderness of brush, and giving their fragrance to the breeze. These stony, thorny jungles are about the last places in the mountains in which one would look for lilies. But though they toil not nor spin, like other people under adverse circumstances, they have to do the best they can. ”

“ Along the bed of small rivulets, in the bottom of narrow gorges densely shaded by great Thujas, Arbutus trees sixty and even eighty feet high, and handsome large–leaved evergreen oaks on the Sierras, I saw in autumn numbers of lily stems seven, eight, and nine feet high, so one could imagine what pictures they formed in early summer; therefore deep dykes and narrow shady lanes would afford congenial homes for various fine species. No mode of cultivating lilies in gardens is equal to that of dotting them through beds of rhododendrons and other American plants usually planted in peat ”

“ The islands were all luxuriant with flowers, there seemed to be acres of carnations, mixed with pansies and chrysanthemums. In the water grew a lovely “aquatic lily,” as our guide called it. I have never seen one like it. The flower was mauve and like a small rhododendron. 168 There were yellow water lilies as well, and arum lilies on the water’s edge. As we passed under a weeping willow, an irridescent humming bird flew out. I had never dreamed of seeing one outside of the Natural History Museum. ”

“ Or, if later in the summer, while strolling in a large, well-kept garden in the evening of a fierce day in August, you have beheld, in a shady nook, a clump of the magnificent "Golden Lily of Japan" [A] standing as high as yourself, with its small leaves and crown of immense white blossoms, striped and spotted with gold, and have recognised the luscious scent exhaled from the blossoms, you will no longer wonder at the enthusiasm of the lily-grower. For many of the almost unknown lilies are quite as beautiful as these. ”

“ At the time when the lilies and roses were in full bloom and when the garden was resplendent with beautiful flowers, the old man, seeing his daughter filled with joy, pointed to a lily unfolding in the rays of the morning sun. "See, in this lily, my daughter, the symbol of innocence. Its leaves are finer than richest satin, and its whiteness equals that of the driven snow. Happy is the daughter whose heart also is pure, for remember the words, 'The pure in heart shall see God.' The more pure the colour, the more difficult to preserve its purity. ”

“ The true flower-lovers, as defined above, take the trouble to find out which are{28} the Lilies that will suit their particular grounds; for it is generally understood that the soil and conditions of any one garden are not likely to suit a large number of different kinds of these delightful plants. Four or five successful kinds are about the average, and the owner is lucky if the superb White Lily is among them. ”

“ The lily that saves the deer is the consolation of poor women. Every morning during the brief season of its blossom, they are up before the dawn. Holding their children by the hand, they are off to the innermost dells of its forest; and before our breakfast-time they are back at the railway stations at Chantilly or Creil, laden with bunches of lilies, which they sell to the dusty passengers bound by the morning mails for London or for Brussels. ”

“ All gardeners ask each other ‘Why do we see great healthy clumps of this lovely Lily in poor little neglected cottage gardens, while in our highly-fed and carefully-tended ones it gets the now well-known Lily disease?’ We hope your Madonna Lilies will not get it, because it is rather heart-breaking to watch its ravages. In the spring you see fine, healthy leaves, and you look forward to the tall stems that will arise from them and bear great scented, shining white flowers. But one day you notice that the leaves look rather brown. A stem has shot up, but the leaves on it look brown, too. ”

“ Lilies were always a very uncertain quantity with me, until the idea occurred of filling my bed with earth from a meadow edge where Lilium Canadense, year after year, mounted her chimes of gold and copper bells on leafy standards often four feet high.
We may read and listen to cultural ways and methods, but when all is said and done, one who has not a fat purse for experiments and failures must live the outdoor life of her own locality to get the best results in the garden. ”

“ Here from the thickets, standing with their roots in the rich, loamy soil of the brookside, gleam the small orange blossoms of the little alpine lily—little only in flower, for the slender stems often rise to a height of six feet, producing several whorls of rich green leaves. These lilies are but an inch or an inch a half long, with their perianth-segments yellow or orange below and deeper orange-vermilion above, their tips only being rolled backward. ”

“ Almond-eyed and jasmine-bosomed, like a poet stringing pearls.
In my tranquil cypress mazes just outside the sleepy town,
Blooms a tribe of laughing lilies fairer than a kingly crown. [Pg 8]
Every lily in the garden wears a woman’s gracious name,
Every lily in the garden set my spirit once aflame;
And amongst that throng of lilies scarcely whiter than his hair,
Hafiz sits and dreams at sunset of the flowers no longer fair ”

“ 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. ”

“ While the alismas and their allies have been so crowded out that they now linger only in a few ponds, marshes, and swamps, to which the more recent lily tribe have not yet had time fully to adapt themselves, the true lilies and their yet more advanced descendants have taken seizin of every climate and every zone upon our planet, and are to be found in every possible position, from the arborescent yuccas and huge agaves of the tropics to the wild hyacinths of our English woodlands and the graceful asphodels of the Mediterranean hill-sides. ”

“ So extravagant is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees, but as far as I have seen, man alone, and the animals he tames, destroy these gardens. Awkward, lumbering bears, the Don tells me, love to wallow in them in hot weather, and deer with their sharp feet cross them again and again, sauntering and feeding, yet never a lily have I seen spoiled by them. ”

“ But the sight of that glorious plant rising proudly from amidst the greenery of its forest setting will be for us more than any picture. And its being "wild" has the same fascination for us that a flower that is "wild," and not garden grown, has for a child. In a florist's shop we may see lilies even more beautiful than this, but the enjoyment we get from seeing the florist's production bears no comparison whatever with the enjoyment we get from seeing this lily in a distant Himalayan forest where not so many white men ever go. We often have experiences which perceptibly age us. ”

“ It is pleasant to remember those quiet Sabbath mornings by remote stagnant rivers and ponds where pure white water lilies just expanded, not yet infested by insects, float on the waveless water and perfume the atmosphere. Nature never appears more serene and innocent and fragrant. A hundred white lilies open to the sun rest on the surface smooth as oil amid their pads, while devil's needles are glancing over them. It requires some skill so to pull a lily as to get a long stem.
The great yellow lily, the spatterdock, expresses well the fertility of the river. ”

“ LILIES. The lily bed should be deep—three feet if possible,—the soil open and porous without being light. There cannot be a better material than sound fibrous loam with which leaf-mold has been mixed. Lilies are rarely benefited by animal manure. The bed should be sheltered from boisterous winds, for lilies lose half their beauty if it becomes necessary to stake their graceful stems, and partially shaded so that the sun does not parch the ground, or prematurely wither their dainty petals. ”

“ These wild Lilies grow very luxuriantly in the garden, often [Pg 46] towering above our heads and forming great candelabra bearing two score or more blooms. It is no easy task to secure their deep-rooted rhizomes in the meadow. I know a young man who won his sweetheart by the patience and assiduity with which he dug for her all one broiling morning to secure for her the coveted Lily roots, and collapsed with mild sunstroke at the finish. ”

“ It is well known that Lilies of the Valley are flowers which resent disturbance, though they are perfectly hardy and vigorous if left in peace.
For if he is blessed whose love and wisdom add to the world's worth, and make life richer in pleasant things, thrice blessed is he whose unselfish example shall be culture to the ignorant or the thoughtless, and set Ladders to Heaven for the feet of those who follow him! ”