Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/123

65 themselves with her wealth of honey, we will fancy they are congratulating their noble and generous friend on her new honours.

I am perhaps growing somewhat too excursive under the influence of these sweet Spring memories; and it may be thought, that in a work ostensibly devoted to flowers, I have no right to trespass upon the forest; but wherever I find such favoured children of Flora as the one last mentioned, be it in garden, grove, forest, or stream, I claim for them right of introduction among their fair and fragrant kindred.

The flowers which have been selected in illustration of Spring now demand a brief notice, especially as several of them are of very classic origin, according to the poets, whose graceful imaginings will well relieve my matter-of-fact prose.

It appears rather singular that the Snowdrop, which is considered an indigenous plant, is never, to my knowledge, mentioned by the old poets; this circumstance would seem to infer a comparatively recent introduction of the lovely flower, and I have found it growing wild in several situations (such as the site of a moated house, long since destroyed, where it flourishes in profusion) where it may originally have been planted as a garden flower. Had it been equally abundant in Chaucer's time, we may be tolerably sure so gentle and beautiful a thing, braving the bleakest season of the year, and excelling even the Daisy in lowly modesty, would not have remained unsung. Nor is it found either in the graceful chaplets of Shakspeare, the songs of Beaumont and Fletcher, or in the rich and