188 THE POETRY OF FLOWERS 
PURITY AND MODESTY. 
WHITE LILT. 
Ye loftier lilies, bathed in morning’s dew 
Of purity and innocence, renew 
Each lovely thought. 
Bartoh. 
This delicate and beautiful flower has for centuries received 
its tribute of admiration from the lovers of nature. Who has 
not felt a glow of delight in perusing that gorgeous description 
of the lily which Christ himself gave to his disciples ? “Of 
all the poetry ever drawn from flowers, none is so beautiful, 
none is so sublime, none is so imbued with that very spirit in 
which they were made, as that of our Lord: ‘ And why take 
ye thought for raiment ? Consider the lilies of the field, how 
they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say 
unto you, that even Solomon,' in all his glory, was not arrayed 
like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of 
the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, 
shall he not much more clothe you, 0 ye of little faith !’ The 
sentiment built upon this entire dependance on the goodness of 
the Creator, is one of the lights of our existence, and could on¬ 
ly have been uttered by Christ; but we have here also the ex¬ 
pression of the very spirit of beauty in which flowers were cre¬ 
ated — a spirit so boundless and overflowing, that it delights to 
enliven and adorn with these riant creatures of sunshine the 
solitary places of the earth ; to scatter them by myriads over 
the very desert ‘ where- no man is, on the wilderness where 
there is no man;’ sending rain ‘to satisfy the desolate and 
waste ground, and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring 
forth.’ ” 
It is generally admitted that the white lily is a native of 
Palestine. The heathen nations consecrated it to Juno, contend¬ 
ing by their fable that it sprang from the milk of that goddess; 
