6 THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
not, neither do they spin ; the Grape that cannot be gathered 
from the Thorn ; and the Wheat that shall be gathered in at the 
great harvest. 
Among the many legends connected with the flower language, 
the following may be cited : 
The Daisy is taken by old Geoffrey Chaucer as the type of 
beauty and admirable virtue, being the very flower into which the 
fair Queen Alceste—who sacrificed her own life to preserve that 
of her husband—was changed. No pilgrim, bending at the 
shrine of the saint whom he considered the most holy and worthy 
of adoration, ever offered more devout homage than did the 
‘‘father of English poetry” to this little “Day’s Eye,” or “ Eye 
of Day,” as he loved to call it.” 
The Almond Tree has been made the emblem of hope and 
also of vigilance ; it belongs to the same family aS the Peach ; it 
flourishes lu.xuriantly in Syria, and sacred writers frequently de¬ 
rive from it very striking metaphors. We are told in Numbers, 
that Aaron’s rod was taken from the Almond Tree. In Dryden’s 
“Virgil ” it i.5 made an emblem of promise. 
Violets are historical flowers, and poetical legends innumerable 
are woven about them. Milton makes Echo dwell 
“ By slow Meander’s margent green 
And in the Violet-embroider’d vale.” 
Prosperpine was gathering Violets as well as Narcissi, when 
seized by Pluto ; la, the daughter of Atlas, fleeing into the 
woods from the pursuit of Apollo, was changed into a Violet; 
the nymphs, who waited on Endymion, in Keats’s beautiful 
legend, 
" Rain’d Violets upon his sleeping eyes; ” 
and in the floral ceremonies of the ancient Greeks, as well as 
Romans, this flower ever had a conspicuous place ; while among 
the comparatively modern French troubadours, a golden Violet 
was the prize of the successful competitor in the lists of song. 
The Hawthorn is a tree around which many legends of flower 
language are woven. The young Athenian girls, we are told, 
