The Poppy. 71 



favorite, and its flowers highly prized ; it is termed the Sky 

 flower, and is the emblem of Household Virtue. 



The enamored of the sun, 

 At his departure hangs her head and weeps, 

 And shrouds her sweetness up, and keeps 



Sad vigils, like the cloistered nun, 

 Till his reviving ray appears, 

 Waking her beauty as he dries her tears. Moorb. 



The Poppy. 



We are told that the ancients, who regarded sleep as the 

 grand physician and the great consoler of human nature, crowned 

 the god of Sleep with a wreath of Poppies. The palace of 

 Somnus was represented as a dark cave, into which the sun's 

 rays never entered ; at the entrance grew Poppies and other 

 somniferous herbs ; the Dreams watched over his couch, attended 

 by Morpheus, his prime minister, holding a vase in one hand, 

 and grasping Poppies in the other. It is of course the emblem 

 of Sleep. 



" From the Poppy I have ta'en 

 Mortals' balm and mortals' bane f 

 Juice, that creeping through the heart, 

 Deadens every sense of smart ; 

 Doomed to heal or doomed to kill, 

 Fraught with good or fraught with ill." 



This flower was anciently consecrated to Ceres, because it 

 was the first food the disconsolate goddess was prevailed on to 

 taste, after the loss of her daughter, Proserpine. The Papaver 

 Rheas — Scarlet Poppy, a native of Europe, but naturalized 

 in our own country, there, as here, beautifully mingles its splen- 

 did blossoms with our sustaining corn ; and it is said, when 

 found profusely scattered, to be a proof either of poor land or 

 bad husbandry : — 



There nodding Poppies mock the hope of all. 



But if the defendant may be allowed to speak for itself, we shall 

 hear a different story : 



