110 
Stepping further into summer, comes the star-white 
Jasmine,—that sweet perfumer of the night, which 
only throws out its full fragrance when its sister stars 
are ke'eping watch in the sky; as if, when the song of 
the nightingale no longer cheered the darkness, it sent 
forth its silent aroma upon the listening air. Many a 
happy home does it garland, and peeps in at many 
a forbidden lattice, where Love and Beauty repose. 
Little did the proud courtiers and stately dames of 
Queen Elizabeth’s day dream that this sweet-scented 
creeper (a sprig of which seemed to make the haughty 
haughtier still) would one day become so common as 
to cluster around and embower thousands of humble 
English cottages,—a degradation which, could they but 
have witnessed, would almost have made every plait 
of their starched ruffs bristle up, like “ quills upon the 
fretful porcupine.” Beautiful are its long, drooping, 
dark-green shoots, trailing around the trellis-work of a 
door-way, like a green curtain embroidered with silver 
flowers; while- here and there the queenly Moss-Rose, 
creeping in and out like the threads of a fanciful tapes¬ 
try, shows its crimson face amid the embowered" green, 
_a beautiful lady peeping through a leaf-clad casement. 
A lover on, the Indian Sea, 
Sighing for her left far behind, 
Inhaled the scented Jasmine tree, 
As it perfumed the evening wind: 
Shoreward he steered at dawn of day, 
And saw the coast all round embowered, 
And brought a starry sprig avpay, 
For her by whose green cot it flowered. 
