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Typical Bouquets. 
“ Can a simple lay, 
Flung on thy bosom like a girl’s bouquet, 
Do more than deck thee for an idle hour. 
Then fall unheeded, fading like the flower?” 
How, indeed, could he have rhymed—he who tells us “with¬ 
ered flowers recall forgotten love ”—had he even had such a 
gossip with a bouquet as did Mrs. Sigourney, wherein she did 
conjure the fair typical creatures to 
“ Speak, speak, sweet guests ! 
Yes, ope your lips in words, 
'T is my delight to talk with you, and fain 
I ’ll have an answer. I’ve been long convinced 
You understand me;” 
for, as this same sweet poetess says, though their 
“ Language is slow, 
Yet theirs is a love 
Simple and sure, that asks no discipline 
Of weary years,—the language of the soul 
Told through the eye” 
by means of emblematic flowers. 
What a boon to lovers this fragrant language must be ! 
Well might Leigh Hunt exclaim, “ in words that breathe ” as 
sweetly as the subject of his verse: 
“ An exquisite invention this, 
Worthy of love’s most honied kiss, 
This art of writing billet doux 
In buds and odours, and bright hues; (e 
In saying all one feels and thinks 
In clever daffodils and pinks, 
Uttering (as well as silence may) 
The sweetest words the sweetest way: 
How fit, too, for the lady’s bosom, 
The place where billet doux repose ’em. 
“ How charming in some rural spot, 
Combining love with garden plot, 
At once to cultivate one’s flowers. 
And one’s epistolary powers, 
Growing one’s own choice words and 
fancies 
In orange-tubs and beds of pansies; 
One’s sighs and passionate declarations 
In odorous rhet’ric of carnations; 
Seeing how far one’s stocks will reach; 
Taking due care one’s flowers of speech 
To guard from blight as well as bathos, 
And watering, every day, one’s pathos. 
A letter comes just gathered: we 
Dote on its tender brilliancy; 
Inhale its delicate expression 
Of balm and pea; and its confession, 
Made with as sweet a maiden blush 
As ever morn bedew’d in bush; 
And then, when we have kissed its wit, 
And heart, in water putting it, 
To keep its remarks fresh, go round 
Our little eloquent plot of ground, 
And with delighted hands compose 
Our answer, all of lily and rose. 
Of tuberose and of violet, 
And little darling fmignonette), 
And gratitude and polyanthus, 
And flowers that say, ‘Felt never man 
thus!”’ 
Although, in these typical bouquets, much must depend on 
