Flowers And Flower-Gardens Part 17

The melancholy Hyacinth, that weeps All night, and never lifts an eye all day.

Ovid, after giving the old fable of Hyacinthus, tells us that "the time shall come when a most valiant hero shall add his name to this flower."

"He alludes," says Mr. Riley, "to Ajax, from whose blood when he slew himself, a similar flower[072] was said to have arisen with the letters _Ai Ai_ on its leaves, expressive either of grief or denoting the first two letters of his name [Greek: Aias]."

As poets feigned from Ajax's streaming blood Arose, with grief inscribed, a mournful flower.

_Young_.

Keats has the following allusion to the old story of Hyacinthus,

Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent On either side; pitying the sad death Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath Of Zephyr slew him,--Zephyr penitent, Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.

_Endymion_.

Our English Hyacinth, it is said, is not ent.i.tled to its legendary honors. The words _Non Scriptus_ were applied to this plant by Dodonaeus, because it had not the _Ai Ai_ upon its petals. Professor Martyn says that the flower called _Lilium Martagon_ or the _Scarlet Turk's Cap_ is the plant alluded to by the ancients.

Alphonse Karr, the eloquent French writer, whose "_Tour Round my Garden_" I recommend to the perusal of all who can sympathize with reflections and emotions suggested by natural objects, has the following interesting anecdote ill.u.s.trative of the force of a floral a.s.sociation:--

"I had in a solitary corner of my garden _three hyacinths_ which my father had planted and which death did not allow him to see bloom. Every year the period of their flowering was for me a solemnity, a funeral and religious festival, it was a melancholy remembrance which revived and reblossomed every year and exhaled certain thoughts with its perfume.

The roots are dead now and nothing lives of this dear a.s.sociation but in my own heart. But what a dear yet sad privilege man possesses above all created beings, while thus enabled by memory and thought to follow those whom he loved to the tomb and there shut up the living with the dead.

What a melancholy privilege, and yet is there one amongst us who would lose it? Who is he who would willingly forget all"

Wordsworth, suddenly stopping before a little bunch of harebells, which along with some parsley fern, grew out of a wall, he exclaimed, 'How perfectly beautiful that is!

Would that the little flowers that grow could live Conscious of half the pleasure that they give

The Hyacinth has been cultivated with great care and success in Holland, where from two to three hundred pounds have been given for a single bulb. A florist at Haarlem enumerates 800 kinds of double-flowered Hyacinths, besides about 400 varieties of the single kind. It is said that there are altogether upwards of 2000 varieties of the Hyacinth.

The English are particularly fond of the Hyacinth. It is a domestic flower--a sort of parlour pet. When in "close city pent" they transfer the bulbs to gla.s.s vases (Hyacinth gla.s.ses) filled with water, and place them in their windows in the winter.

An annual solemnity, called Hyacinthia, was held in Laconia in honor of Hyacinthus and Apollo. It lasted three days. So eagerly was this festival honored, that the soldiers of Laconia even when they had taken the field against an enemy would return home to celebrate it.

THE NARCISSUS

Foolish Narcisse, that likes the watery sh.o.r.e

_Spenser_

With respect to the NARCISSUS, whose name in the floral vocabulary is the synonyme of _egotism_, there is a story that must be familiar enough to most of my readers. Narcissus was a beautiful youth. Teresias, the Soothsayer, foretold that he should enjoy felicity until he beheld his own face but that the first sight of that would be fatal to him. Every kind of mirror was kept carefully out of his way. Echo was enamoured of him, but he slighted her love, and she pined and withered away until she had nothing left her but her voice, and even that could only repeat the last syllables of other people's sentences. He at last saw his own image reflected in a fountain, and taking it for that of another, he fell pa.s.sionately in love with it. He attempted to embrace it. On seeing the fruitlessness of all his efforts, he killed himself in despair. When the nymphs raised a funeral pile to burn his body, they found nothing but a flower. That flower (into which he had been changed) still bears his name.

Here is a little pa.s.sage about the fable, from the _Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_ of Beaumont and Fletcher.

_Emilia_--This garden hath a world of pleasure in it, What flower is this?

_Servant_--'Tis called Narcissus, Madam.

_Em._--That was a fair boy certain, but a fool To love himself, were there not maids, Or are they all hard hearted?

_Ser_--That could not be to one so fair.

Ben Jonson touches the true moral of the fable very forcibly.

'Tis now the known disease That beauty hath, to hear too deep a sense Of her own self conceived excellence Oh! had'st thou known the worth of Heaven's rich gift, Thou would'st have turned it to a truer use, And not (with starved and covetous ignorance) Pined in continual eyeing that bright gem The glance whereof to others had been more Than to thy famished mind the wide world's store.

Gay's version of the fable is as follows:

Here young Narcissus o'er the fountain stood And viewed his image in the crystal flood The crystal flood reflects his lovely charms And the pleased image strives to meet his arms.

No nymph his inexperienced breast subdued, Echo in vain the flying boy pursued Himself alone, the foolish youth admires And with fond look the smiling shade desires, O'er the smooth lake with fruitless tears he grieves, His spreading fingers shoot in verdant leaves, Through his pale veins green sap now gently flows, And in a short lived flower his beauty glows

Addison has given a full translation of the story of Narcissus from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book the third.

The common daffodil of our English fields is of the genus Narcissus.

"Pray," said some one to Pope, "what is this _Asphodel_ of Homer?" "Why, I believe," said Pope "if one was to say the truth, 'twas nothing else but that poor yellow flower that grows about our orchards, and, if so, the verse might be thus translated in English

--The stern Achilles Stalked through a mead of daffodillies"

THE LAUREL

Daphne was a beautiful nymph beloved by that very amorous gentleman, Apollo. The love was not reciprocal. She endeavored to escape his G.o.ds.h.i.+p's importunities by flight. Apollo overtook her. She at that instant solicited aid from heaven, and was at once turned into a laurel.

Apollo gathered a wreath from the tree and placing it on his own immortal brows, decreed that from that hour the laurel should be sacred to his divinity.

THE SUN-FLOWER

Who can unpitying see the flowery race Shed by the morn then newflushed bloom resign, Before the parching beam? So fade the fair, When fever revels in their azure veins But one, _the lofty follower of the sun_, Sad when he sits shuts up her yellow leaves, Drooping all night, and when he warm return, Points her enamoured bosom to his ray

_Thomson_.

THE SUN-FLOWER (_Helianthus_) was once the fair nymph Clytia.

Broken-hearted at the falsehood of her lover, Apollo, (who has so many similar sins to answer for) she pined away and died. When it was too late Apollo's heart relented, and in honor of true affection he changed poor Clytia into a _Sun-flower_.[073] It is sometimes called _Tourne-sol_--a word that signifies turning to the sun. Thomas Moore helps to keep the old story in remembrance by the concluding couplet of one of his sweetest ballads.

Oh! the heart that has truly loved never forgets, But as truly loves on to its close As the sun flower turns on her G.o.d when he sets The same look that she turned when he rose

But Moore has here poetized a vulgar error. Most plants naturally turn towards the light, but the sun-flower (in spite of its name) is perhaps less apt to turn itself towards Apollo than the majority of other flowers for it has a stiff stem and a number of heavy heads. At all events it does not change its att.i.tude in the course of the day. The flower-disk that faces the morning sun has it back to it in the evening.

Gerard calls the sun-flower "The Flower of the Sun or the Marigold of Peru". Speaking of it in the year 1596 he tells us that he had some in his own garden in Holborn that had grown to the height of fourteen feet.

THE WALL-FLOWER

The weed is green, when grey the wall, And blossoms rise where turrets fall

Herrick gives us a pretty version of the story of the WALL-FLOWER, (_cheiranthus cheiri_)("the yellow wall-flower stained with iron brown")

Why this flower is now called so List sweet maids and you shall know Understand this firstling was Once a brisk and bonny la.s.s Kept as close as Danae was Who a sprightly springal loved, And to have it fully proved, Up she got upon a wall Tempting down to slide withal, But the silken twist untied, So she fell, and bruised and died Love in pity of the deed And her loving, luckless speed, Turned her to the plant we call Now, 'The Flower of the Wall'

The wall-flower is the emblem of fidelity in misfortune, because it attaches itself to fallen towers and gives a grace to ruin. David Moir (the Delta of _Blackwood's Magazine_) has a poem on this flower. I must give one stanza of it.

In the season of the tulip cup When blossoms clothe the trees, How sweet to throw the lattice up And scent thee on the breeze; The b.u.t.terfly is then abroad, The bee is on the wing, And on the hawthorn by the road The linnets sit and sing.

Lord Bacon observes that wall-flowers are very delightful when set under the parlour window or a lower chamber window. They are delightful, I think, any where.