THIRD ANNUAL FLOWER SERMON. 25 



any keen recognition of the sweetness and charm of the 

 lilies of the field. But the same can bo said, though not 

 quite so sweepingly, of all the ancient literatures, of the 

 classics of Greece and Rome as well as of Judea. 



There were gardens and festal wreaths and dryad-myths 

 and altars to Chloris ; but not in Homer nor in Euripides, nor 

 in Horace nor in Virgil, will you come on any such hearty 

 love of flowers, such tenderness and interest, as the modern 

 poets display, the Italians, the Germans, the French, and 

 pre-eminently the English. And it should be distinctly 

 noted that it is not the feebler bards, those unable to treat 

 mightier themes, who chant the flower song. For us it 

 begins with that stout man of the world, Geoffrey Chaucer, 

 who says when 



The moneth of May 

 Is comen, and that I hear the fowles synge 

 And that the flowers gynnen for to sprynge 

 Farewel my book and my devocion. 



The shrewd critic who drew the Wife of Bath and the 

 Sergeaunt of Laws, the noble sage who drew the Knight 

 and the Parson, goes into raptures over the common daisy, 

 crying 



I love it and evere ylike newe, 

 And ever shal til that myn herte dye. 



Need I remind you of the kingcups and gilliflowers and 

 coronations in Spenser's " Shepherds' Calendar? " or how 

 Milton calls, with discriminating adjectives that prove the 

 scholar of wood and field, for pansies and cowslips and 

 woodbines to strew the hearse of Lycidas? And then 

 there is Herrick with his hands full of daffodills; and 

 George Herbert with brave bunches of roses ; Goldsmith 

 and Cowper culling from hedgerows and village gardens ; 

 Burns observant of each weed turned under by his plow- 

 share ; Wordsworth the laureate of the humbler blossoms ; 

 Scott and Shelley and Keats; in these days Browning, 

 whose botany whether English, Italian or French, is profuse 



