32 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



springing up everywhere and defying the neatest 

 gardener. 



There are many more welcome wild-flowers, but 

 I must leave them for the garden flowers. First, 

 of course, come the many dafibdils, which ever since 

 the day of Perdita we have been taught to look on 

 as the chief flowers of March. With the exception 

 of the rose and lily, I suppose no flower has had so 

 much written on it, and such loving praises given 

 to it, as the daffodil or narcissus. From Homer 

 downwards many a poet has so praised it, and few 

 English poets have passed it by. Gower, Chaucer, 

 Spenser, Shakespeare, and Herrick are among the 

 early writers ; and among the later writers I need 

 only mention Wordsworth and Jean Ingelow, and 

 I need do no more than mention the names. During 

 the last twenty years the daftodils have been raised 

 (or degraded ?) to the rank of fashionable flowers, 

 and much has been published about them, and every- 

 thing that has been written has been thoroughly 

 searched for and abundantly quoted. I would only 

 draw attention to one poem of great beauty, which 

 is very little known, by Aubrey de Vere. It is called 

 ' Ode to the Daffodil,' and is entirely in praise of 

 the wild daffodil, and so it reminds me that though 

 I place the daffodil among our garden plants, it is 



