84 
THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
And, as when all the summer trees are seen 
So bright and green, 
The holly leaves their fadeless hues display — 
Less bright than they; 
But when the bare and wintry woods we see. 
What then so cheerful as the holly tree? 
So serious should my youth appear among 
The thoughtless throng, 
So would I seem amid the young and gay 
More grave than they, 
That in my age as cheerful I might be 
As the green winter of the holly tree.” 
ALOE (Aloe]. Grief. Bitterness. 
The aloe holds to the soil only by weak roots ; 
it loves to grow in the desert; its taste is very 
bitter. Thus grief withdraws us from the world, 
detaches us from the earth, and fills our hearts with 
bitterness. These plants live almost entirely on air, 
and affect grotesque and wonderful forms. Mexico 
and the sands of Africa are their native climes. 
AGNUS CASTUS. Coldness. Life without love. 
Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galienus inform us that the 
priestesses of Ceres formed their virginal couch of 
the fragrant branches of this shrub, which covers itself 
with long tufts of white or violet flowers, and that 
they regarded it as the palladium of their chastity. 
Nuns used to drink a water distilled from it, to 
banish terrestrial thoughts from their solitary cells: 
and several orders of monks wore a knife whose 
