IV. THE FLOWER. 89 



alone ; for nearly all other flowers keep with them, 

 all their lives, their nurse or tutor ^leaves, — the group 

 which, in stronger and humbler temper, protected 

 them in their first weakness, and formed them to 

 the first laws of their being. But the poppy casts 

 these tutorial leaves away. It is the finished picture 

 of impatient and luxury-loving youth,— at first too 

 severely restrained, then casting all restraint away, 

 — yet retaining to the end of life unseemly and 

 illiberal signs of its once compelled submission to 

 laws which were only pain, — not instruction. 



19. Gather a green poppy bud, just when it 

 shows the scarlet line at its side ; break it open 

 and unpack the poppy. The whole flower is there 

 complete in size and colour, — its stamens full- 

 grown, but all packed so closely that the fine silk 

 of the petals is crushed into a million of shapeless 

 wrinkles. When the flower opens, it seems a deliver- 

 ance from torture : the two imprisoning green leaves 

 are shaken to the ground ; the aggrieved corolla 

 smooths itself in the sun, and comforts itself as it 

 can ; but remains visibly crushed and hurt to the 

 end of its days. 



20. Not so flowers of gracious breeding. Look at 

 these four stages in the young life of a primrose, 

 Fig. 7. First confined, as strictly as the poppy 

 within five pinching green leaves, whose points 



