





















FLORAL POESY. 

How canst thou ever sorrow’s emblems be ? 
Rather I deem thy slight and fragile form, 
In mild endurance bending gracefully, 
Is like the wounded heart, which ’mid the storm 
Looks for the promised time which is to be, 
In pious confidence. Oh! thou shouldst wave 
Thy branches o’er the lowly martyr’s grave. 


SUNFLOWER. 

(Fidelity. ) 
HE classic legend of Clytie has been attac.ed to the 
sunflower. ‘That nymph had been beloved by He- 
lios, but it was not long before he transferred his aftec- 
tions to Leucothoe, daughter of King Orchamus. When 
Clytie found herself unable to regain her lover, she in- 
formed the Persian monarch of his daughter’s love affair, 
and he had the unfortunate girl entombed alive. He- 
lios, enraged at the terrible tragedy, entirely forsook the 
nymph whose jealousy had caused it; and she, over- 
whelmed with grief, lay prone upon the earth for nine 
days and nights without any sustenance, her eyes con- 
tinually following the course of her adored sun through 
the heavens. At last the gods, less pitiless than her 
former admirer, transformed her into a sunflower, and 
as Ovid says: 
s 
as 

| || 
8) haa 
| 
a} 
he 4 
Tie 
Se 
‘¢ Still the loved object the fond leaves pursue, 
Still move their root, the moving sun to view.” 

Robert Browning thus alludes to the story of Rudel, 

