A Handful of Weeds 355 
crowns of it at the burial of Achilles. Wreaths of 
it are still worn, and are hung over doors and win- 
dows by Swiss peasants on Ascension Day. Milton 
speaks of 
“Tmmortal amaranth, a flower which once 
In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life, 
Began to bloom; but soon for man’s offence, 
To heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows 
And flowers aloft shading the Fount of Life.” 
And his angels are 
“Crowned with amaranth and gold.” 
From being the flower of immortality, amaranth 
became, by a natural association of ideas, the flower 
of death. In a beautiful poem by Longfellow, 
‘* The Two Angels,’’ it crowns the brows of Azrael, 
the Death Angel, while the Angel of Life wears a 
wreath of asphodels or daffodils, the flowers of life. 
Because perhaps death is as strong as love, ama- 
ranth is an antidote for the love-philtre. Yet who 
would expect to find the flower hymned of many 
poets on the coarse crouching weed which invades 
the bean-patch, or disfigures the gravel-paths once 
our pride? 
When the signal-service was still far in the un- 
known future country people used to forecast the 
weather by the doings of some common and familiar 
plants, which are now superseded by modern science 
