IV. THE FLOWER. 79 



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 blossoming — 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 gathered 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. 



