APPENDIX. 
179 
TO THE BRAMBLE FLOWER. 
“ Thy fruit full well the schoolboy knows. 
Wild bramble of the brake! 
So put thou forth thy small white rose; 
I love it for his sake. 
Though woodbines flaunt and roses glow 
O’er all the fragrant bowers. 
Thou need’st not be ashamed to show 
Thy satin-threaded flowers; 
For dull the eye, the heart is dull, 
That cannot feel how fair, 
Amid all beauty beautiful. 
Thy tender blossoms are! 
How delicate thy gauzy frill! 
How rich thy branchy stem ! 
How soft thy voice when woods are still, 
And thou sing’st hymns to them! 
When silent showers are falling slow, 
And ’mid the general hush, 
A sweet air lifts the little bough, 
Lone whispering through the bush ! 
The primrose to the grave is gone; 
The hawthorn flower is dead, 
The violet by the mossed gray stone 
Hath laid her weary head; 
But thou, wild bramble ! back dost bring, 
In all thy beauteous power, 
The fresh, green days of life’s fair spring, 
And boyhood’s bloomy hour. 
Scorned bramble of the brake ! once more 
Thou bidd’st me be a boy. 
To gad with thee the woodlands o’er, 
In freedom and in joy.” 
When Titania gives Bottom in charge to the fairies, she 
commands them to 
“ Feed him with apricocks and dewberries.” 
Dewberries are the fruit of one species of the bramble — 
the rubus ccesius, according to Brande. 
