Periwinkle. 
87 
“ We asked him why he wept, mother, 
Whene’er we found the spots 
Where periwinkle crept, mother, 
O’er wild forget-me-nots. 
‘Ah me! ’ he said, while tears ran down 
As fast as summer showers; 
* It is because I cannot see 
The sunshine and the flowers.’ ” 
Chaucer repeatedly speaks of it in his “ Romaunt of the 
Rose,” even making it one of the ornaments of the God of 
Love: 
“ His garment was every dele 
Ipurtraied and wrought with floures, 
By divers medeling of coloures; 
Floures there was of many a gise, 
Iset by campace in a sise; 
There lacked no floure to my dome, 
Ne not so moch as floure of brome, 
Ne violet, ne eke perevink, 
Ne floure none that men can on think.” 
The Madagascar periwinkle is a lovely plant, with an up¬ 
right stem three or four feet high; its flowers are crimson or 
peach-coloured on the upper surface, and a pale flesh-colour on 
the under: it varies with a white flower, having a purple eye. 
It will seldom live out of doors in this climate. 
In his “ Herbal,” old Culpepper says that the periwinkle is 
owned by Venus, and that “ the leaves, eaten together by man 
and wife, caused love between them;” but now-a-days it re¬ 
quires a somewhat stronger tonic, apparently, to produce so 
desirable a result. 
