Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/719

1868.] by the peasant, who attributes to them efficacious virtues, or considers them a visible protection, potent to guard his children and his cattle from harm. Thus he watches with reverence the witch-grass growing in his pastures or on the dunghill by his door, sure that as long as it remains there his possessions are all safe, and he with them. And he pulls a bit of the snake-grass, or only touches it with his fingers, to preserve himself from the bite of vipers.

Early in the morning, perhaps before the first lark has mounted from its grassy nest to salute the rising sun, the laborer, as he passes in the fields, notices the morning sleeper (dandelion) opening the yellow eye it will close so soon again. And when the afternoon shadows begin to fall upon the lea, like the wandering fingers of night, he knows that, on his cottage hearth yonder, the dry brush-wood will soon begin to crackle, because the four o'clock weed has just opened its little blossom.

On the hot slopes of Provence, several aromatic grasses cover the soil with their purple and white spikes, and throw to the air their penetrating perfumes. The lavender, the sage, the balm, the mint, and the wild thyme, all so loved of the bees, cling to the rocks that, without them, would be too barren, or softly carpet the roadside, where goats and sheep browse upon them. Virgil mentions thyme (thymus serpyllum) as one of the aromatic herbs bruised by Thestylis with leeks, as a refreshing beverage for the sun-burnt reapers.

It was on the flowers of a species of thyme, which still grows in the stone beds of the Mediterranean and on Mount Hybla, in Sicily, that the far-famed honey of Mount Hymettus was gathered. One of Virgil's shepherds, wishing to flatter his mistress, compares her to that balmy thyme, and says: "O Galathea, nereid whiter than the swans, more graceful than ivy, and to me more suave than to the bees the thyme of Hybla, as soon as the bulls quit the pastures and seek their stable, come to thy Corydon, if thou feelest for him any love."

To-day, the peasants of Provence call the wild balm herb of forgiveness, and on their return from mass they pluck bunches of it, which they suspend on the walls of their houses, because they believe it will serve to keep any quarrel from springing up between them.

"Love grass," or, the more I see you the more I love you, is the graceful name under which country people know best what botanists call the myosotis, one of the field flowers of Europe, adored in Germany as the forget-me-not. Blue, of the purest turquoise-blue, it has for the eye an irresistible charm of color. The moment you see it, it is yours; you must have it, even if to pluck it you have to risk your feet in the humid surroundings of swamps, or deep amid the tall grasses from where the sun has not yet quite driven away the shadows of night. Consecrated by love from time immemorial, the blue forget-me-not is never given or sent to any one but as the expression and pledge of a tender feeling, and is as familiarly cherished as the violet or the daisy.

Rousseau has immortalized the wild periwinkle that he found on the slopes of the Lake of Geneva, where his summer days were spent, and which blossoms in some of our city church-yards, and in unfrequented places of New Jersey. The periwinkle is called myrtle in New England, and its trailing, glossy leaves, so dark that in the midst of the fresh green of spring they look as the relic of former seasons, are used with effect in the decoration of churches and ballrooms.

The queen of the meadow is another poetical appellation, by which village children know the vestal-white plumes of the spirea, one of the inhabitants of