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Buttercups. 
“ ’ T is sweet to love in ripen’d age the trumpet blast of Fame, 
1 o pant to live on Glory’s scroll, though blood may trace the name ; 
’T is sweet to love the heap of gold, and hug it to our breast,— 
To trust it as the guiding star and anchor of our rest. 
But such devotion will not serve—however strong the zeal— 
To overthrow the altar where our childhood loved to kneel. 
Some bitter moment shall o’ercast the sun of wealth and power, 
And then proud man would fain go back to worship bird and flower.” 
Under the antique names of crow-foot, king-cup, gold-cup, 
and other quaint but suggestive titles, these flowers were for¬ 
merly much praised, but latterly our poets have neglected 
them for other blooms ; still, however, it must be confessed, 
notwithstanding the more elaborate beauty of garden flowers, 
generally awarding their tribute to the wildings of nature. 
Shakspeare’s “ cuckoo-buds of yellow ” are supposed to be 
buttercups, for they “do paint the meadows with delight,” and 
spread out before our enraptured gaze a glittering Field of 
Cloth of Gold, whereon fays might well hold their elfin tour¬ 
neys, and fairy queens keep festive court. 
Poor Clare frequently introduced this wild flower into his 
pictures of rural life, and in one of his poems makes it serve 
as a goblet for the fays : in his “Village Minstrel,” he combines 
the buttercup with its almost invariable companion in poesy, 
the daisy: 
“Before the door, with paths untraced, 
The green sward many a beauty graced; 
And daisy there, and cowslip too, 
And buttercups of golden hue.” 
Eliza Cook has given us a poem to “Buttercups and Daisies,” 
beginning— 
‘ ‘ I never see a young hand hold 
The starry bunch of white and gold, 
But something warm and fresh will start 
About the region of my heart.” 
Wordsworth is another of the few English poets who have 
deigned to sing the beauties of the 
“Buttercups that will be seen, 
Whether we will see or no. ” 
In former times the round bulbous root of these flowers 
procured them the name of “ St. Anthony’s turnips.” 
