^ The Afternoon of the Tear j% 



A. Grove : ' It is not perhaps so generally known as it 

 might be, that no hybrid Lily seems definitely fixed, not 

 even Lilium testaceum — by far the oldest hybrid known. 

 None of those which have come into the writer's hands 

 can be trusted to breed true from seed and all must be 

 raised by offsets, scale bulbs or stem cuttings.' 1 



On the lilies cultivation produces but little effect. 

 The Madonna lily which our Anglo-Saxon ancestors 

 knew and loved is the same to-day, unchanged through 

 centuries. What lily is so fair as the beloved Madonna 

 lily, with her ' holy garments fit for beauty and for use ' 

 like Aaron's robe ? Never lovelier than in cottage gardens, 

 yet what can compare with l the plant and flower of 

 light,' as Ben Jonson called her, or to what can she be 

 likened ? Upborne on a slender stem, arrayed in lustrous 

 sheen whiter than snow, and with only her delicate 

 orange-golden stamens for a crown, what other flower 

 offers so rare a vision of royal glory and even more royal 

 humility ? And her scent, though of surpassing sweetness, 

 is like the radiance of the flower, elusive and not of this 

 world. The scent of roses is the scent of summer in all 

 its beauty, but the scent of the Madonna lily is the scent 

 of ages yet to come and of beauties and splendours yet 

 unrevealed. From those glorious trumpets float melodies 

 at one with the music of the spheres, and which must 

 surely have ascended in unison with the morning stars 

 when they sang together. Although the Madonna lily 

 lives apart and on a wholly different plane from the other 

 denizens of the garden, yet the characteristic we love more 

 than her beauty, her purity and aloofness is the most 

 royal of all her attributes — her humility. Unconscious 



1 Gardeners' Chronicle, October 22, 1927. 



163 



