MAY 24 
Hibiscus_.. Delicate beauty . 
Blessed, thrice blessed days ! but ah ! how short! 
Bless’d as the pleasing charms of holy men, 
But fugitive, like those, and quickly gone. 
O slippery state of things ! What sudden turns, 
What strange vicissitudes, in the first leaf 
Of man’s sad history! To-day most happy; 
And ere to-morrow’s sun has set, most abject! 
How scant the space between these vast extremes! 
MAY 25 
Holly . Foresight. 
I love to view these things with curious eyes, 
And moralize; 
And in this wisdom of the holly tree 
Can emblems see 
Wherewith, perchance, to make a pleasant rhyme, 
One which may profit in the after-time. 
JlOBBRT (SOUTHEY, 
MAY 26 
Hollyhock (Mountain Laurel). Ambition. 
Ambition is a spirit in the world, 
That causes all the ebbs and flows of nations. 
Prown. 
Ambition is an idol on whose wings 
Great minds are carved only to extreme: 
To be sublimely great, or to -be nothing. 
(Southern. 
