VII 



The Globe Flower 



WHAT is this flower, yellow 

 and pale, and yet so singu- 

 larly bright, yielding nothing 

 in our May gardens to Iris, 

 Narcissus, or Tulip, and yet springing 

 up wild here and there by streamlets 

 in the rocky dells amongst the mountains 

 of Wales and Cumberland ? Wherever 

 we meet with it, it commands our in- 

 stant homage. Amidst the blaze of 

 gaudy flowers, for all its unpretending 

 dress, none looks of a descent more 

 manifestly noble. And when wild we 

 always feel as though it had strayed 

 from a selected circle. The jolly butter- 

 cups and field flowers appear like country 

 folk ; it stands among them all con- 

 spicuous like a king. I once saw it 

 in a dell where it had found for itself 

 a little nook of green which the common 

 wild flowers might not enter, and it grew 

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