THE DAISY OF THE DALE. 
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blessed Martyr of Canterbury, that from dungeon-floor 
to turret-steep, he would not leave one stone above the 
other when he reached the stronghold of his enemy. 
But when the wars of the Roses were over, the king 
wrote a “ broad letter,” with his own hand, to which 
he affixed his royal seal, and dispatched it by a mes¬ 
senger; and instead of foes, the two old knights be¬ 
came friends, even as they were in the days of their 
youth; And the sounds which startled Love in the 
forest were the monarch and his retainers, and the two 
old knights, and their followers, and a great concourse 
of people, who had sallied out from the castle, and 
were going to hunt the noblest hart they could find in 
the thicket, and to honor by their presence the mar¬ 
riage ceremony of “ The Daisy of the Dale.” 
The Daisy was Chaucer’s favorite flower; and 
never since hath bard done it such reverence as the 
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venerable father of English poetry. All worship, 
saving his own, is that of words only; his is the ado¬ 
ration of a heart which overflowed with love for the 
Daisy. He tells us how he rose with the sun to watch 
this beautiful flower first open, and how he knelt be- 
