166 THE SHAKESPEARE GARDEN 



orders lilies, asphodels, amaryllis, irids and rushes. 

 No tribes of flowers have had so great, so varied, or 

 so healthy an influence on man as this great group 

 of Drosidtz, depending not so much on the white- 

 ness of some of their blossoms, or the radiance of 

 others, as on the strength and delicacy of the sub- 

 stance of their petals; enabling them to take forms 

 of faultless, elastic curvature, either in cups, as the 

 Crocus, or expanding bells, as the true Lily, or heath- 

 like bells, as the Hyacinth, or bright and perfect 

 stars, like the Star of Bethlehem, or, when they are 

 affected by the strange reflex of the serpent nature 

 which forms the labiate group of all flowers, clos- 

 ing into forms of exquisitely fantastic symmetry as 

 the Gladiolus. Put by their side their Nereid sisters, 

 the Water-lilies, and you have in them the origin 

 of the loveliest forms of ornamental design and the 

 most powerful floral myths yet recognized among 

 human spirits, born by the streams of the Ganges, 

 Nile, Arno and Avon. 



"For consider a little what each of those five 

 tribes has been to the spirit of man. First, in their 

 nobleness ; the Lilies gave the Lily of the Annuncia- 

 tion; the Asphodels, the flower of the Elysian 

 Fields; the Irids, the fleur-de-lys of chivalry; and 

 the Amaryllis, Christ's lily of the fields; while the 



