84 
THE POETRY OF FLOWERS 
With heart never changing, and brow never cold, 
Love on through all ills, and love on till they die, 
Moore. 
FIRST EMOTION OF LOVE. 
LILAC. 
The lilac is consecrated to the first emotion of love, because 
nothing is more delightful than the sensations it produces on 
its first appearance on the return of spring. The freshness of 
its verdure, the pliancy of its tender branches, the abundance 
of its flowers— their beauty, though brief and transient— their 
delicate and varied colours ; all their qualities summon up those 
sweet emotions which enrich beauty, and impart to youth a 
grace divine. Anacreon has beautifully expressed this idea in 
the following lines : —• 
Beauty’s rosy ray 
In flying blushes richly play : $ 
Blushes of that celestial flame j 
Which lights the cheeks of virgin shame. 
Albano was unable to blend, upon the palette which love 
had confided to him, colours sufficiently soft and delicate to j 
convey the peculiarly beautiful teints which adorn the human 
face in early youth ; 
The velvet down that spreads the cheek ; 
Van Spaendock himself laid down his pencil in despair before 
a bunch of lilac. Nature seems to have aimed to produce 
massy bunches of these flowers, every part of which should 
astonish by its delicacy and its variety. The gradation of col¬ 
our, from the purple bud to the almost colourless flowers, is 
the least charm of these beautiful groups, around which the 
