164 
LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
DANDELION. 
THE RUSTIC ORACLE. 
When you bend your steps through the plain, 
or ascend the hill-side, or stand on the moun¬ 
tain-top, look down to the greensward at your 
feet, and you will perceive patches of verdure, 
covered with golden flowers, or with light and 
transparent globes. It is the Dandelion, the 
oracle of the fields, which may be every where 
consulted. Like man, it is spread over the 
whole face of the globe; it is found in the four 
quarters of the world, near the pole as beneath 
the equator, on the margin of rivers and streams 
as well as on sterile rocks: every where it offers 
to the hand that would gather, or the eye that 
would consult them, its flowers, which shut and 
open at certain hours, serving the solitary shep¬ 
herd for a clock, while its feathery tufts are his 
barometer, predicting calm or storm. 
Leontodons unfold 
On the swart turf their ray-encircled gold; 
