26 LILIUM CANADENSE. AMERICAN YELLOW LILY. 



flowers which they highly esteemed, they gave to the red Lily a 

 miraculous origin. It is said that a very excellent young god- 

 dess, Sylvia, who was as fair as she was good, had but a poor 

 opinion of Jupiter, who paid his addresses to her. Jupiter was 

 not accustomed to such rebuffs, and treated the fair lady rather 

 rouo-hly ; but she was so shocked at such rudeness, that her nose 

 suddenly took to bleeding, and from a few drops which fell to 

 the ground the red Lily sprung. The white Lily is said to be a 

 later creation, and to have sprung from the milk of Juno, and, 

 we are sorry to say, when she was in a somewhat intoxicated 

 condition from imbibing too freely of nectar. Considering the 

 more respectable origin of the red Lily, it seems scarcely just 

 that most of the best Lily-poetry has been given to the white ; 

 and that the white Lily, not satisfied with what may be fairly her 

 due, has taken some that belongs of right to her darker sister : 

 for the Lily which Solomon in all his glory could not compete 

 with was much more probably of the red than the white kind. 

 If we are asked to 



" Bring Lilies for a maiden's grave," 



or if, on Percival's invitation, we go to 



" a sweet green spot 



Where a Lily is blooming fair," 



or, with Keats, to look at one 



" who grew 



Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished," 



or to see the 



" Lady lily gently looking down," 



or in fact to imagine any poetic Lily whatever, the chance is 

 that we shall be called on to go where the 



" Queen of the field, in a milk-white mantle drest, 

 The lovely Lily waved her curling crest." 



It is, however, some satisfaction to feel after all this poetic 

 sliedit of the old world on fair Sylvia's d<'votion to womanly 



