70 FKOSERPINA, 



condition of form in flowers ; and, observe, I don't mean, 

 just now, the appointed and disciplined grouping, but the 

 wayward and accidental. Don't confuse the beautiful 

 consent of the cluster in these sprays of heath with the 

 legal strictness of a foxglove, though that also has its 

 divinity ; but of another kind. That legal order of blos- 

 soming for which we may wisely keep the accepted 

 name, 'inflorescence,' is itself quite a separate subject of 

 study, which we cannot take up until we know the still 

 more strict laws which are set over the flower itself. 



9. I have in my hand a small red poppy which I gath- 

 ered on Whit Sunday on the palace of the Caesars. It is 

 an intensely simple, intensely floral, flower. All silk and 

 flame : a scarlet cup, perfect-edged all round, seen among 

 the wild grass far away, like a burning coal fallen from 

 Heaven's altars. You cannot have a more complete, a 

 more stainless, type of flower absolute ; inside and out- 

 side, all flower. No sparing of . colour anywhere no 

 outside coarsenesses no interior secrecies; open as the 

 sunshine that creates it ; fine-finished on both sides, down 

 to the extremest point of insertion on its narrow stalk ; 

 and robed in the purple of the Caesars. 



Literally so. That poppy scarlet, so far as it could be 

 painted by mortal hand, for mortal King, stays yet, against 

 the sun, and wind, and rain, on the walls of the house of 

 Augustus, a hundred yards from the spot where I gathered 

 the weed of its desolation. 



10. A pure cup, you remember it is ; that much at least 



