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dAormwvaad, 
Artemisia absinthium. Naturar Orver: Composite — Aster Family. 
wa) RTEMISIA (so called in honor of the goddess Artemis, the 
Greek equivalent of the Roman Diana), or, in our vernacu- 
lar, Wormwood, is an intensely bitter plant, and has very 
powerful medicinal properties. Its flowers are yellow, and it 
is to some extent naturalized in the mountainous districts 
of our Northern States. Columella, the Latin writer on 
agriculture of the first century of our era, mentions both the plant 
and absinthites, or Wormwood wine; and the celebrated Greek med- 
ical and botanical writer, Dioscorides, also speaks of it perhaps a 
century later. The Roman Wormwood is the kind usually found in 
our gardens, and is a native of Austria and other parts of Europe. 
Absence. 
E flowers that droop, forsaken by the spring; 
Ye birds that, left by summer, cease to sing; 
Ye trees that fade when autumn heats remove: 
Say, is not absence death to those who love? —pPoge, 
IKE as the culver on the bared bough, So I, alone now left, disconsolate, 
Sits mourning for the absence of her mate, Mourn to myself the absence of my love; 
And in her songs sends many a wishful vow And, wandering here and there all desolate, [dove. 
For his return that seems to linger late: Seek, with my plaints, to match that mournful 
— Spenser, 
HORT absence hurt him more, 
And made his wound far greater than before; 
Absence not long enough to root out quite 
All love, increases love at second sight. 
—Thomas May. 
H Absence! by thy stern decree HAT tender strains of passion can impart 
How many a heart, once light and free, The pangs of absence to an amorous heart? 
Is fill’d with doubts and fears! Far, far too faint the powers of language prove — 
Thy days like tedious weeks do seem, Language, that slow interpreter of love! 
Thy weeks slow-moving months we deem, Souls paired like ours, like ours to union wrought, 
Thy months long-lingering years. Converse by silent sympathy of thought. 
i, —F. T. Watson, —Pattison, é 
8 
a . ay 
