164 
LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
DANDELION. 
THE RUSTIC ORACEE, 
When- 'you bend your steps through the plain, 
or ascend the hill-side, or stand on the mountain-top, 
look down to the greensward at your feet, and you 
will perceive patches of verdure, covered with golden 
flowers, or with light and transparent globes. It is 
the Dandelion, the oracle of the fields, which may 
be every where consulted. Like man, it is spread 
over the whole face of the globe ; it is found in the 
four quarters of the world, near the pole as beneath 
the equator, on the margin of rivers and streams as 
well as on sterile rocks : every where it ofi'ers to the 
hand that would gather, or the eye that would con¬ 
sult them, its flowers, which shut and open at certain 
hours, serving the solitary shepherd for a clock, 
while its feathery tufts are his barometer, predicting 
calm or storm. 
' Leontodons unfold ' 
On the swart turf their ray-encircled gold; 
