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FLORAL POESY. 

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ORANGE-BLOSSOM. 
(Your purity equals your loveliness.) 
RANGE-BLOSSOM is generally deemed typical of 
chastity. The practice of brides wearing a wreath 
of it on their wedding-day, though still retained in 
some countries, is not so fashionable here as formerly. 
In his ‘‘ Ode to Memory,” Tennyson alludes to the 
custom of using these blossoms at nuptials thus : 

“¢ Like a bird of old 
In triumph led, 
With music and sweet showers 
Of festal flowers, 
Unto the dwelling she must sway.” 
THE ORANGE-BLOSSOM. 
Just then, beneath some orange-trees, 
Whose fruit and blossoms in the breeze 
Were wantoning together, free, 
Like age at play with infancy. 
THE ORANGE-TREE, 
SPENSER. 
NExtT thereunto did grow a goodly tree, 
With branches broad dispread and body great, 
Clothéd with leaves, that none the wood might see, 
And laden all with fruit, as thick as thick might be. 

