Sunflower. 
321 
“ Real faith is like the sun’s fair flower, 
Which ’midst the clouds that shroud it, and the winds 
That wave it to and fro, and all the change 
Of air, and earth, and sky, doth rear its head. 
And looketh up, still steadfast, to its God.” 
The classic legend of Clytie has been attached to the sun¬ 
flower. That nymph had been beloved by the fickle Helios, 
but it was not long before he transferred his affections to 
Leucothoe, daughter of King Orchamus. When Clytie found 
herself unable to regain her lover, she informed the Persian 
monarch of his daughter’s love affair, and he had the unfor¬ 
tunate girl entombed alive. Helios, enraged at the terrible 
tragedy, entirely forsook the nymph whose jealousy had caused 
it; and she, overwhelmed with grief, lay prone upon the earth 
for nine days and nights without any sustenance, her eyes 
continually following the course of her adored sun through 
the heavens. At last the gods, less pitiless than her former 
admirer, transformed her into a sunflower, and, as Ovid says : 
“ Still the loved object the fond leaves pursue, 
Still move their root, the moving sun to view.” 
There is a smaller sunflower, the botanical name for which 
is Hclenium , derived from Helen of Troy, from whose tears it 
was supposed to have sprung. Drummond, in his lines upon 
the death of Prince Henry, thus alludes to it: 
“ And thou, O flower! of Helen’s tears that’s bom, 
Into those liquid pearls again now turn. ” 
A work on floral caligraphy says that this blossom has been 
made the symbol of false riches, because gold, of which the 
sunflower is so suggestive, cannot of itself, however abundant 
it may be, render a person truly rich; and thereupon the writer 
lecounts the story of Pythes. He was a Lydian, and bein^ 
possessed of immense mineral wealth, neglected the cultivation 
of his lands. His wife, in order to prove to him the inutility 
of such riches as he prized, when he sat down to dine had all 
the dishes filled with golden imitations of the various eatables 
When the covers were removed, this sensible woman said to 
the assembled guests, “ I set before you such fare as we have 
for we cannot reap what we do not sow.” The lesson produced 
due impression upon Pythes, and, it is said, he did not fail to 
profit by it. 
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