Snowdrop. 
T 57 
“ The snowdrop, Winter’s timid child, 
Awakes to life, bedewed with tears, 
And flings around its fragrance mild ; 
And, where no rival flow’rets bloom 
Amidst the bare and chilling gloom, 
A beauteous gem appears. 
* * * * 
** Where’er I find thee, gentle flower, 
Thou still art sweet and dear to me! 
For I have known the cheerless hour, 
Have seen the sunbeams cold and pale. 
Have felt the chilling wintry gale, 
And wept and shrunk like thee.” 
Mrs. Robinson is correct in endowing the snowdrop with 
“ fragrance mild ; ” Mrs. Barbauld styles it “ the scentless 
plant,” and, although her evidence is corroborated by these 
lines of Mrs. Charlotte Smith, the snowdrop has a faint per¬ 
fume : 
“ Like pendent flakes of vegetating snow, 
The early herald of the infant year, 
Ere yet the adventurous crocus dares to blow, 
Beneath the orchard boughs thy buds appear. 
“ While still the cold north-eastnn genial lowers, 
And scarce the hazel in the leafless copse 
Or shallows show their downy powdered flowers, 
The grass is spangled with thy silver drops. 
“Yet when those pallid blossoms shall give place 
To countless tribes of richer hue and scent, 
Summer’s gay blooms, and Autumn’s yellow race, 
I shall thy pale inodorous bells lament.” 
These poetic specimens prove not only the favour this floral 
“ day star ” finds with the poets, but also, what may be more to 
the present purpose, with the ladies. Women and flowers are 
a natural and every-day association—“sweets to the sweet;” 
and there does not appear anything so very' singular in the 
fact that in the Malayan tongue the same word signifies women 
and flowers. 
The snowdrop is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and tradition 
asserts that it blooms on the second of February, or Candlemas 
Day—the day kept in celebration as that on which the Holy 
Virgin took the child Jesus to the Jewish Temple, and there 
presented an offering. 
