95 



FLORAL SYMBOLS. 



IN TWO PAETS. 

 PART I. 



Ye poetry of woods ! romance of fields ! 



Nature's imagination bodied bright ! 

 Earth's floral page, that high instruction yields ; 



For not, oh, not alone to charm the sight. 



Gave God your blooming forms, your leaves of light; 

 Ye speak a language which we yet may learn — 



A divination of mysterious might : 

 And glorious thought may angel eyes discern 

 Flower writ in mead and vale, where'er man's footsteps turn. 



Chakles Swain. 



Symbolism has been a prominent feature in the history of the 

 human race, and has manifested itself in an infinite diversity of forms. 

 Men have ever sought for the expression and embodiment of the sen- 

 timents and passions of their hearts, and have found them in the ap- 

 pearances of nature. The green world of nature, with its multi- 

 plicity of beauties — whether of field or forest, of mountain, glen, or 

 river — has thus become a great allegory of the human mind in all its 

 phases and manifestations ; hence the invention of symbolic language, 

 or the adoption of types as expressive of the hopes and fears and 

 Protean sentiments of the human heart. This symbolism had its first 

 origin as a system among the imaginative and luxurious people of 

 oriental climes. Under a soft, serene, and intensely blue sky, glow- 

 ing with unclouded sunshine during the day, and glittering with un- 

 numbered stars by night, it is not surprising that the imagination, 

 once kindled by the contemplation of beauty, should trace, in the 

 varied forms of loveliness which adorned the bosom of the earth, a 

 language expressive of the phases of the human mind, and a sympathy 

 for human sorrows in the enchantments of the earth and heaven. And 

 thus, in these sunny and luxuriant climes, the highest aspirations of 

 the human soul — religion and poetry, the veneration for beauty and 

 holiness, found language and expression in the symbolic vocabulary 



