LATER SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY HERBALS 187 



unseen Portunos [Brownie?] will join company with the way- 

 farer; and after riding awhile by his side will at length seize 

 his reins and lead his horse into the slough wherein he will 

 stick and wallow while the Portunos departs with mocking 

 laughter, thus making sport of man's simplicity." Perhaps 

 they still make sport of our simplicity, but we shall be the 

 losers if they vanish altogether from the earth. If in impish 

 mood they lead the wayfarer into sloughs, do not the sheen- 

 bright elves lighten some of the darkest paths of pain which 

 human beings are forced to tread? Are not these Ariel-like 

 creatures hnks between the flowers of earth which they haunt 

 and the stars of heaven whence they seem to derive their 

 radiance? The fairies have almost deserted us, but perhaps 

 they will one day come back to our gardens and teach us that 

 there is something true, though beyond what we can know, in 

 the old astrological lore of the close secret communion between 

 stars and flowers. Do not flowers seem to reflect in microscopic 

 form those glorious flowers which deck the firmament of heaven ? 

 In many flowers there is something so star-like that almost 

 unconsciously our minds connect them with the luminaries in 

 the great expanse above us, and from this it seems but a short 

 step to the belief that there is between them a secret communion 

 which is past our understanding. 



" This is the enchantment, this the exaltation, 

 The all-compensating wonder, 

 Giving to common things wild kindred 

 With the gold-tesserate floors of Jove ; 

 Linking such heights and such humihties, 

 Hand in hand in ordinal dances, 

 That I do think my tread, 

 Stirring the blossoms in the meadow-grass 

 Flickers the unwithering stars." ^ 



Mystics of all ages and of all civilisations have felt this secret 



bond between what are surely the most beautiful of God's 



creations — flowers and stars; and its fascination is in no small 



^ Francis Thompson, An Atithem of Earth. 



