Primrose. 
265 
In another portion of his artless verse he tells, how, as a 
child, he rambled o’er the fields for flowers, and 
“ Robbed every primrose-root I met, 
And ofttimes got the root to set; 
And joyful home each nosegay bore; 
And felt—as I shall feel no more. ” 
In the following lines the old poet, Browne, associates this 
flower with a scene of rustic idle thoughtlessness: 
“ As some wayfaring man, passing a wood, 
Goes jogging on, and in his mind nought hath, 
But how the primrose finely strews the path.” 
And the sketch is suggestive of Wordsworth’s oft-quoted 
idea, in “ Peter Bell 
“ A primrose by a river’s brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more.” 
To Mrs. Heman’s ever-faithful muse, however, we must turn 
for a full description of this offspring of the youthful year, and 
of its favourite haunts : 
“ I saw it in my evening walk, 
A little lonely flower; 
Under a hollow bank it grew, 
Deep in a mossy bower. 
“ An oak’s gnarl’d root to roof the cave 
With gothic fretwork sprang, 
Whence jewell’d fern, and arum-leaves, 
And ivy garlands hung. 
“ And close beneath came sparkling out “ 
From an old tree’s fallen shell 
A little rill that dipt about 
The lady in her cell. 
“ And then, methought, with bashful pride 
She seemed to sit and look 
On her own maiden loveliness, 
Pale imaged in the brook. 
No other flower, no rival grew 
Beside my pensive maid ; 
She dwelt alone, a cloister’d nun, 
In solitude and shade. 
No raffling wind could reach her there; 
No eye, methought, but mine, 
Or the young lambs that came to drink, 
Had spied her secret shrine. 
( C 
“ And there was pleasantness to me 
In such belief—cold eyes 
That slight dear Nature’s loveliness, 
Profane her mysteries. ” 
