PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
77 
it over. It is first mentioned by Spenser as “ Daisies decking 
prime , 55 and by Browne— 
“Fair fall that dainty flower ! and may there be 
No shepherd graced that doth not honour thee; 5 ’ 
also by Milton, Drayton, Herrick, and Dry den, but by all of 
them the notice taken is very meagre. During the eighteenth 
century the Daisy was far too lowly a flower to be noticed at 
all; and it was not till Burns uprooted one with his plough 
and sang its dirge that the poets ventured to notice the “ wee, 
modest, crimson-tipped flower . 55 
From his day the little flower 
has had its full mead of praise; 
Wordsworth could not speak 
too lovingly of it, and has one 
poem especially, “An address 
to the Daisy , 55 which ranks 
among his very best poems; 
and Tennyson has pleasant 
references to it. 
There is considerable interest 
in the botanical structure of 
the Daisy, but that I cannot now 
enter into. Its geographical 
range is very large: it grows 
everywhere in Europe; it grows 
in North Africa, but not in Asia or Australasia; very sparingly 
in North America, and nowhere in the Tropics. 
Its names are all old names; its Latin name bellis is from 
bellus , pretty, and is found in “Pliny , 55 though probably Pliny’s 
bellis was not our daisy ; its continental name, Marguerite, is 
probably from its pearl-like appearance; it was always classed 
as the flower of S. Margaret, yet Mrs. Jameson says that she 
never saw but one figure of S. Margaret with Daisies. The 
English name has always been the same, the Days-Eye; and— 
u Well by reason, men it call may 
The Daisie, or else the eye of the Day 
The Empresse and floure of floures all Chancer. 
