20 THE LANGUAGE OP FLOWERS, 
ed love and filial sorrow.” This is only one 
of many instances in which our greatest poet 
has displayed his fondness for flowers, and 
his delicate appreciation of their uses and si- 
militudes. We have another in the “ Winter’s 
Tale,” where he makes Perdita give flowers 
to her visitors appropriate to, and symbolical 
of, their various ages. See Act 4, Scene 3. 
The mystical Language of Flowers, as ap- 
plied to the passions and sentiments, appears 
to have had its rise in those sunny regions 
where the rose springs spontaneously from its 
native soil, and the jessamine and the tube- 
rose fill with beauty and perfume alike the 
garden and the wilderness : — 
Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, 
Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever 
shine, 
Where the fight wings of Zephyr, oppressed with 
perfume, 
Wax faint o’er the gardens of Gul in her bloom ; 
Where the citron and orange are fairest of fruit, 
And the voice of the nightingale never is mute ; 
Where the tints of the earth, and the hues of the 
sky 
In colours though varied, in beauty may vie, 
And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye ; 
