224 OUR WILD FLOWERS AND 



glad tidings ; and it hath, in no other province of nature, such 

 prized and pleasant teachers. We are not wrong in referring to 

 them much of our ideas of what is beautiful, for there are no forms 

 more agreeable to our perception than those which imitate flowers in 

 their shape and symmetry, — no combination of figures more graceful 

 than those of the tracery and intertwinings of trees and creepers, — 

 and no colours more grateful than those which glow in their blos- 

 soms. The result of all these varied influences is well proved by 

 the tincture which plants have communicated to our language. So 

 full indeed is this with words and phrases that have a vegetable 

 origin, that, in their use, we are scarcely conscious of the source 

 they come from, or of their metaphorical sense. Take this example, 

 selected, however, as much for the moral it conveys, as for its 

 aptness : — 



" There is in every human heart 

 Some not completely barren part. 

 Where seeds of truth and love might grow, 

 And flowers of generous virtue blow : 

 To plant, to watch, to water there. 

 This be our duty, be our care." 



And this one : — 



" And he who gives his name to fate. 

 Must plant it early, reap it late ; 

 Nor pluck the blossoms as they spring, 

 So beautiful, yet perishing." 



And this other : — 



" You behold me here 

 A man bereaved, with something of a blight 

 Upon the early blossoms of his life 

 And its first verdure, having not the less 

 A living root, and drawing from the earth 

 Its vital juices, from the air its powers : 

 And svuely as man's health and strength are whole 

 His appetites regerminate, his heart 

 Re-opens, and his objects and desires 

 Shoot up renew'd*." 



Another proof of this influence of plants is found in the fact that 

 we have associated them so intimately vrith every stage and circum- 

 stance of man's life, that no other mode of portraying his mortal 

 journey is more easily understood, or half so agreeable in its sym- 

 bolical meanings. Death arrests the germ as soon as it has sprouted, 



storm amidst the relics of the primeval forest in Glen Afifrick, which I 

 heard in 1847. Poets speak wisely in using the expression, ' strings of 

 the forest lyre.' " 



* The two first examples are from Bowring ; the third from Taylor's 

 Philip Van Artevelde. I dare say the memory of most of my readers will 

 furnish them with many illustrations even more apt. 



