DANDELION. 



Sad vigils, like a cloistered nun, 

 Till his reviving ray appears, 

 Waking her beauty as he dries her tears." 



The hour when the Dandelion opens and closes being known, 

 it is a shepherd's time-piece ; Howitt, speaking of it, says, — 



" Dandelion, with globe of down, 

 The schoolboy's clock in every town, 

 Which the truant puffs amain, 

 To conjure lost hours back again." 



This globe of down is also the Oracle to every incipient 

 lover of either sex. The youth not yet in his 'teens, meeting 

 with one of them, begins to tempt his fate. He plucks 

 the seed-stem from the plant, and puffs away the feathered 

 sphere, alternately saying, "She loves me!" "She loves 

 me not!" thinking of the pretty face and sparkling eyes 

 which enchanted his throbbing heart at the last juvenile 

 party. Then, according as one of these sentences is uttered 

 as the last sphere leaves its native station, so is the answer 

 to his anxious inquiry. The response is somewhat like 

 those of the Delphic Oracle, very ambiguous, and capable 

 of being interpreted as the inquirer desires. So he breathes 

 gently or fiercely, softly or sharply, lest the response should 

 dissipate the fond illusion which is adding a new and delicious 

 charm to his young life. 



76 



