The Blue Flower Border 279 



The blossoms of this little Iris seem to lie on the 

 surface of the grass like a froth of blueness ; they 

 gaze up at the sky with a sort of intimacy as if they 

 were a part of it. Thoreau called it an " air of easy 

 sympathy." The slightest clouding or grayness of 

 atmosphere makes them turn away and close. 



The naming of Proserpina leads me to say this: 

 that to grow in love and knowledge of flowers, and 

 above all of blue flowers, you must read Ruskin's 

 Proserpina. It is a book of botany, of studies of 

 plants, but begemmed with beautiful sentences and 

 thoughts and expressions, with lessons of pleasant- 

 ness which you can never forget, of pictures which 

 you never cease to see, such sentences and pictures 

 as this : — 



" Rome. My father's Birthday. I found the loveliest 

 blue Asphodel I ever saw in my life in the fields beyond 

 Monte Mario — a spire two feet high, of more than two 

 hundred stars, the stalks of them all deep blue as well as 

 the flowers. Heaven send all honest people the gathering 

 of the like, in the Elysian Fields, some day ! " 



Oh, the power of written words ! when by these 

 few lines I can carry forever in my inner vision this 

 spire of starry blueness. To that writer, now in the 

 Elysian Fields, an honest teacher if ever one lived, 

 I send my thanks for this beautiful vision of blue- 

 ness. 



