PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
167 
It was the Heliotrope or Solsequium or Turnesol of our 
forefathers, and is the flower often alluded to under that name. 1 
“All yellow flowers,” says St. Francis de Sales, “and, above 
all, those that the Greeks call Heliotrope, and we call Sun¬ 
flower, not only rejoice at the sight of the sun, but follow with 
loving fidelity the attraction of its rays, gazing at the sun, and 
turning towards it from its rising to its setting ” (“ Divine Love,” 
Mulholland’s translation). 
Of this higher and more religious use of the emblematic 
flower there are frequent examples. I will only give one from 
G. Withers, a contemporary of Shakespeare’s later life— 
“ When with a serious musing I behold 
The grateful and obsequious Marigold, 
How duly every morning she displays 
Her open breast when Phoebus spreads his rays ; 
How she observes him in his daily walk, 
Still bending towards him her small slender stalk ; 
How when he down declines she droops and mourns, 
Bedewed, as ’twere, with tears till he returns ; 
And how she veils her flowers when he is gone. 
When this I meditate, methinks the flowers 
Have spirits far more generous than ours, 
And give us fair examples to despise 
The servile fawnings and idolatries 
Wherewith we court these earthly things below, 
Which merit not the service we bestow. 55 
From the time of Withers the poets treated the Marigold 
very much as the gardeners did-—they passed it by altogether 
as beneath their notice. 
1 “Solsequium vel heliotropium; Solsece vel sigel-hwerfe 55 {i. e. sun- 
seeker or sun-turner).— ^Elfric’s Vocabulary . 
“Marigolde ; solsequium, sponsa solis . 55 —Catholicon Anglicum. 
In a note Mr. Herrtage says, “the oldest name for the plant was 
ymbglidegold , that which moves round with the sun. 55 
