38 THE POETRY OF FLOWERS. 
passage in the sacred volume " Consider the 
lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, 
neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto you, 
that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like 
one of these." From the little common flower 
called heart's ease, we turn to that well-known 
passage of Shakspeare, where the fairy king so 
beautifully describes the "little western flower." 
And the forget-me-not has a thousand associa- 
tions tender and touching ; but unfortunately, like 
many other sweet things, rude hands have almost 
robbed it of its charm. Who can behold the pale 
narcissus, standing by the silent brook, its stately 
form reflected in the glassy mirror, without losing 
themselves in that most fanciful of all poetical 
conceptions, in which the graceful youth is de- 
scribed as gazing upon his own beauty, until he 
becomes lost in admiration, and finally enamoured 
of himself? while hopeless Echo sighs herself away 
into a sound, for the love, which, having centred in 
such an object, was never to be bought by her 
caresses, nor won by her despair. 
Through gardens, fields, forests, and even over 
rugged mountains, we might wander on in this 
fanciful quest after remote ideas of pleasurable 
sensation connected with present beauty and en- 
joyment ; nor would our search be fruitless so long 
as the bosom of the earth afforded a receptacle for 
the germinating seed, so long as the gentle gales 
of summer continued to waft them from the parent 
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