Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/124

66 clusters of Ben Jonson or Spenser; but I must leave this enigma to be solved by abler minds than mine.

The is hailed year after year with unchanged delight, as our earliest of

and, as a native of our soil, "The fair maid of February" (for by that sweet name is she sometimes known) has an undisputed claim to a chief place in our list of floral friends. In real unpoetical truth, I believe the yellow aconite is "the ae first flower springs either in moor or dale;" but to acknowledge such precedence in any but a solely botanical work, would seem like robbing the heiress of her birthright; and poetry cannot suffer Spring's fair and virgin queen to be deposed in favour of any less qualified representative, or the Christmas Rose, which gladdens even a drearier season, might justly lay claim to more celebration than she now gains. It would thus appear that simple Audreys suspicions of "our craft" are somewhat too well founded, when she enquires of Touchstone, if "poetical means honest in word and deed?"

The is fancied by Prior as the bridegroom of the Lady Snowdrop. It is a graceful conceit, for they are a most faithful couple; rarely severed during their short lives. Together they rise from the snow—together bide the storm, or bask in the sunshine—and when one droops and dies, we know that both are leaving us.