FLORAL SYMBOLS. 
219 
Almonde .—Wer bana bir Ominde. 
Pear .—Let me not despair. 
Bose .—You smile, but still my anguish grows ; 
Bose .—For tbee my heart with love still glows. 
Tea .—You are both sun and moon to ire. 
Tea .—Yours is the light by which I see. 
But these are arbitrary and fancied similarities,, founded 
on the mere rhyming and jingling of words; and although 
occasionally conveying an idea, are upon the whole mere 
frivolities to fritter away the hours which might be better 
spent in the growth of ideas, in tracing out the sym¬ 
bolical expressions of nature, in establishing these as 
keys to the aesthetics of all beauty, and as the frame¬ 
work of the noblest poetry. 
To catch a glimpse of floral symbolism, when yet in 
its pristine vigour and poetical sublimity, we must pene¬ 
trate the dust of departed years, and make search among 
the literary and artistic remains of ancient India, Egypt, 
and Chaldea, where superstition clothed all things with 
a wild and terrible grandeur, and rendered natural objects 
emblematic of the highest spiritual truths. 
Amid these relics of former magnificence, and within 
the walls of these crumbling temples, are yet to be seen 
the sculptured symbols which embodied the ideas of their 
daily faith. Dread and mystical as many of these are, 
even when viewed in the calm light of reason, there 
is yet a bewitching poetry and a sublimity of thought 
associated with them, as startling and wonderful as they 
are beautiful and true. The history of the universe has 
been written in living characters upon the obdurate 
granite in which those mystic caves are hewn. The 
