166 THE POETRY OF FLOWERS 
MIRTH. 
BROOM. 
’Twas that delightful season, when the broom 
Full-flowered, and visible on every steep, 
Along the copses runs in veins of gold. 
Wordsworth. 
“The broom,” says Mr. Martyn, “converts the most barren 
spot into an odoriferous garden.” Wordsworth notices it in the 
following natural and beautiful lines : — 
On me such beauty summer pours, 
That I am covered o’er with flowers; 
And when the frost is in the sky 
My branches are so fresh and gay, 
That you might look at me and say, 
This plant can never die. 
The butterfly, all green and gold, 
To me hath often flown, 
Here in my blossoms to behold 
Wings lovely as his own. 
Burns introduces the yellow broom in his “Caledonia:” — 
Their groves of sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon, 
Where bright-beaming summers exalt the perfume; 
Far dearer to me yon lone glen o’ green breckan, 
Wi’ the burn stealing under the lang yellow broom. 
It is said that when Linnaeus came to England, in 1736, he 
was so much delighted with the golden bloom of the furze, 
which he saw for the first time on the commons near London, 
that he fell on his knees enraptured at the sight. 
The Spanish broom is cultivated with us for the beauty and 
perfume of its flowers. It approaches nearer to the size of a 
tree than a shrub, and continuing in blossom from July to October, 
