82 March — Daffodils. 



strangely unfortunate in being scientifically misnamed 

 ribes — a name which the Arabs gave to an acid rhu- 

 barb, and a Frenchman by mistake applied to the wild 

 gooseberry.* 



But of all the plants that flourish at this season of 

 the year not one is equal to the daffodil in its splen- 

 dor of golden yellow on pale dusty basis of long green 

 leaves. The causes of the singular and almost blinding 

 intensity of the color are a gradation from semi-trans- 

 parent outward petals, which are positively greenish in 

 themselves, and still more so by transparence owing to 

 green leaves around, to the depth of yellow in the womb 

 of the flowers, where green influences are excluded, but 

 yellow ones multiplied by the number of the petals. So 

 in the heart the color is an intense orange cadmium, 

 not dark, but most intense — a color that we remember 

 all the year round. Wordsworth found that this floral 

 splendor haunted him, — 



1 I gazed — and gazed — but little thought 

 What wealth the show to me had brought. 

 For oft when on my cough I lie 

 In vacant or in pensive mood, 

 They flash tip on that inward eye 

 Which is the bliss of solitude? 



It is well for our northern yellow daffodils that they 

 should be thus associated with one of the most beauti- 

 ful passages in which any poet has ever revealed to 

 us something of the working of his own memory and 



* I allude to the Ribes Grossularia, sometimes called Ribes Uva-crispa y 

 the Gooseberry Ribes ; not to the Ribes Rubrum, Ribes petraum, or Ribes 

 nigrum, various species of currant Ribes. 



