83 



Mingle your charms of hue and smell, 

 Which Flora wakes in her spring-tide hours S 

 My fair one comes across the dell, 

 She comes to gather flowers. 



" Twilight of morn ! from thy misty tower 

 Scatter the trembling pearls around, 

 Hang up thy gems on fruit and flower, 

 Bespangle the dewy ground ! 

 PhcEbus, rest on thy ruby wheels — 

 Look, and envy this world of ours ; 

 For my fair one now descends the hills, 

 She comes to gather flowers. 



" List ! for the breeze on wings serene 

 Through the light foliage sails ; 

 Hidden amidst the forest green 

 Warble the nightingales ! 

 Hailing the glorious birth of day 

 With music's best, divinest powers. 

 Hither my fair one bends her way. 

 She comes to gather flowers." 



London Magazine, Spanish Romances, No. 3. 



It was, perhaps, the general power of sympathy upon the 

 subject of plants, which caused them to be connected with 

 some of the earliest events that history records. The my- 

 thologies of all nations are full of them ; and in all times they 

 have been associated with the soldiery, the government, and 

 the arts. Thus the patriot was crowned with oak ; the hero 

 and the poet with bay ; and beauty with the myrtle. Peace 

 had her olive ; Bacchus his ivy ; and whole groves of oak- 

 trees were thought to send out oracular voices in the winds. 

 One of the most pleasing parts of state-splendor has been as- 

 sociated with flowers, as Shakspeare seems to have had in 

 his mind when he wrote that beautiful line respecting the ac- 

 complished prince, Hamlet : 



" The expectancy and rose of the fair state." 



It was this that brought the gentle family of roses into such 

 unnatural broils in the civil wars : and still the united coun- 

 tries of Great Britain have each a floral emblem : Scotland 



