Thrice welcome, little English flower! 
To this resplendent hemisphere, 
Where Flora’s giant offspring tower 
In gorgeous liveries all the year ; 
Thou, only thou, art little here, 
Like worth unfriended and unknown, 
Yet to my British heart more dear 
Than all the torrid zone. 
Thrice welcome, little English flower ! 
I’ll rear thee with a trembling hand ; 
Oh, for the April sun and shower, 
The sweet May dews of that fair land, 
Where Daisies, thick as star-light, stand 
In every walk ! — that here may shoot 
Thy scions, and thy buds expand, 
A hundred from one root. 
Thrice welcome, little English flower ! 
Of early scenes beloved by me, 
While happy in my father’s bower, 
Thou shalt the blithe memorial be ; 
The fairy sports of infancy, 
Youth’s golden age, and manhood’s prime, 
Home, country, kindred, friends, — with thee, 
I find in this far clime. 
Thrice welcome, little English flower ! 
To me the pledge of hope unseen ; 
When sorrow would my soul o’erpower 
For joys that were, or might have been, 
I’ll call to mind, how, fresh and green, 
I saw thee waking from the dust ; 
Then turn to Heaven with brow serene, 
And place in God my trust. 
It is not poets alone, says an author quoted in “the Sentiment of Flowers,” who half worship flowers. 
What an enthusiastic devotion is that which sends a man from the attractions of home, the ties of neigh- 
bourhood, the bonds of country, to range plains, valleys, hills, and mountains, for a new flower. What a 
spirit must have animated Hermann, Hasselquist, Tournefort, Linnaeus, Solander, Saussure, Humboldt, 
and hundreds of those who have sacrificed every personal convenience and selfish motive for the sake of 
illustrating the volume of nature, and opening almost a new existence upon those whose researches are 
necessarily limited. But the love of flowers is not shared exclusively by the poet and the naturalist. Oh ! 
no, the little child loves the flower garden, and watches with intense interest the early opening buds, such 
fair types of itself. The young, the middle aged, and the hoary head, silvered with the snows of three- 
score years and ten ; all, all hang with delight over the blooming parterre. The bud of infancy, the half ex- 
panded flower of youth, the perfect blooms of the meridian of life, and the drooping leaves of closing exis- 
tence, are here all seen and noted. No wonder that man, in the beautiful simplicity of earlier times, 
loved flowers, and hence formed an eloquent language, that spoke to the heart in a c still small voice/ more 
touching than the tenderest accents. No wonder that the most lovely ornament for the young virgin was 
a chaplet of fair flowers ; the most glorious distinction of the warrior a wreath of bays. No wonder that 
the bier of the early dead was strewed with these passing emblems of a passing existence. 
The flowers that we behold each year, 
In chequered meads their heads to rear, 
Now rising from their tomb, 
E’en these do cry, 
That though men die, 
New life from death may come. Hagthorpe. 
October, says William Howitt, bears pretty much the same character in the fall of the year, as April does 
in the spring. The beginning of April is still wintry, the end may often lay strong claims to the name of summer; 
the commencement of October is frequently distinguished by the lingering of summer-warmth and summer- 
flowers, the end by frosts and snows. It is a month as various as April — clear skies and fogs, drought and rain, 
sunshine and storm, greenness and nakedness, it has them all, and often in a rapid succession. In the 
early part of the month the hardy yarrow and a few other flowers remain, and the meadow-saffron (Colchicum 
autumnale) and the autumnal crocus (Crocus autumnalis) spring up and give a last gleam of floral beauty to 
the year. The grass, if the weather be mild, is vividly green, and luxuriant as in spring. Fine clear days 
occasionally come out, affording in the perfect repose of the landscape, the blueness of the waters, and the 
strong shadows cast by the trees upon the sunny ground, the highest pictorial beauty ; but they are speedily 
past, and rains and mists wrap the face of the earth in gloom. Yet the glooms and obscurity of autumnal 
fogs, however dreary to the common eye, are not unwelcome to the lover of Nature. They give an air of 
wildness to the most ordinary scenery ; but to mountains, to forests, to solitary sea-coasts, they add a 
sombre sublimity that at once soothes and excites the imagination ; and even when not pleasant themselves, 
they minister to our pleasures by turning the heart to our bright firesides, to the warmth and perpetual 
summer of home. 
Orchards are now finally cleared of fruit, at least the trees, for in the cider counties they still lie in 
large heaps in the orchards in all their glory of gold and crimson, and many will lie there till frosty nights 
set in ; the frost being supposed to improve their quality by increasing the quantity of saccharine matter in 
them, though they are apt to become decayed by too long lying, and to injure the flavour of the cider. 
Gardens have lost the chief of their attractions ; farmers are busy ploughing, and getting in their wheat : 
swallows generally disappear this month. 
I 
