OUR PASTORAL LIFE. 225 



and the infant is "nipt in the bud;" the cherub on the breast is 

 " an opening bud ;" the prattUng child is the mother's " rose-bud ;" 

 the girl bursting to maturity is the " opening rose ;" the pet of the 

 village is the " flower of Yarrow ;" every hamlet boasts "its flower 

 that is born to blush unseen ;" the stalwart youth is, to his parents, 

 as the "stately Cedar of Lebanon;" the good man is graphically 

 represented " as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out 

 her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her 

 leaf shall be green ; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, 

 neither shall cease from yielding fruit;" the aged naturally fall 

 "into the sere and yellow leaf*;" and humankind finishes its 

 history by declaring that " all flesh is grass, and all the goodliness 

 thereof is as the flower of the field : the grass withereth, the flower 

 fadeth." Now the favouritism of these similes is based on this — 

 that while they express the truth distinctly, they convey that expres- 

 sion veiled in a company of associations which or flatter or sooth 

 or comfort the user of them, whose then mood of mind would ill 

 bear to have its mingled feelings spoken out in curt and vulgar 

 words, which embrace only the coarser ingredients, but leave un- 

 whispered all the sweetness, the pride, the endearment, and the hope 

 which the heart keeps unto itself, and which publication would dis- 

 sipate and destroy. 



This impress from the vegetable world which affects us all, must 

 operate more powerfully on those of a poetical temperament ; and 

 hence we find that their language is not only florid, but abounds in 

 floral similitudes and emblems ; and their admiration often bursts 

 out into descriptions and odes of individual species, which are indeed 

 sometimes very beautiful. Michaelis has remarked that " the fre- 

 quent recurrence for metaphorical expressions to natural objects, and 

 particularly to plants and to trees, is so characteristic of the Hebrew 

 poetry, that it might be almost called the botanical poetry." The 

 remark needed not to have been so restricted. I cannot compare 

 the Hebrew with the poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, but in 

 such poetry of the suimy eastern lands as I know through transla- 

 tions, the language of flowers is redolent ; and so also is that of 

 southern Europe ; and it abounds just not in excess in that of our 

 own country. Even in very early and rude times wherein ballads 

 had their birth, floral imagery was not awanting ; and when society 

 had advanced so that a more refined and elegant phytology could be 

 understood and relished, flowers became the principal medium 

 through which the poets endeavoured to move the heart and its 

 affections. Similes drawn from them disappear from burlesque 

 poetry, and are seldom used with advantage in the didactic and 

 epic ; but every one who has painted rural customs and the inno- 

 cency of pastoral life, — who has tried to seduce us to the love of 



* " In me that time of life thou dost behold. 

 When yellow leaves, or few, or none, do hang 

 Upon the bough." — Shakespere. 

 VOL. I, a 



