52 PROSERPINA. 



and flower is always the most important part of the design of 

 the plant ; and in the modes of its death are some of the 

 most touching lessons, or symbolisms, connected with its ex- 

 istence. The utter loss and far scattered ruin of the cistus 

 and wild rose, the dishonoured and dark contortion of the 

 convolvulus, the pale wasting of the crimson heath of Apen- 

 nine, are strangely opposed by the quiet closing of the brown 

 bells of the ling, each making of themselves a little cross as 

 they die ; and so enduring into the days of winter. I have 

 drawn the faded beside the full branch, and know not which 

 is the more beautiful. 



8. This grouping, then, and way of treating each other in 

 their gathered company, is the first and most subtle condition 

 of form in flowers ; and, observe, I don't mean, just now, the 

 appointed and disciplined grouping, but the wayward and ac- 

 cidental. Don't confuse the beautiful consent of 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 sepa- 

 rate 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 in- 

 tensely 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 outside, 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. 



