1-12 FUNEBAL FLOWERS. 



It was not in their sports oniy, that the 

 Greeks were so lavish of flowers ; they crowned 

 their dead with them, and the mourners wore 

 them, in their funeral ceremonies. That they 

 also planted them on the graves of the departed, 

 or at least, deemed it pleasant and fitting that 

 they should be there, we may learn from this 

 passage of one of their great dramatists. In the 

 " Agamemnon," the chorus, lamenting over 

 Alcestis, says : 



" Oh, lightly on thy hallowed grave 

 Lie the green turf, the flow'ret wave." JEscHYLrs. 



Indeed, flowers seem to have been to this taste- 

 ful people, a sort of poetic language, whereby 

 they expressed the intensity of feelings to which 

 they found common language inadequate. 



A modern poetess, who has caught, and finely 

 transfused into our language, the spirit of an- 

 tique song, thus makes a Grecian mother lament 

 the loss of her son, supposed to have perished 

 at sea : 



'Where art thou where? Had I but lingering prest 

 On thy cold lips the last,, long kiss, but smoothed 

 The parted ringlets of thy shining hair 



