Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/254

156 And she must gather flowers to bury you,

And see the house made handsome. Then she sung

Nothing but "Willow, willow, willow;" and between

Ever was "Palamon, fair Palamon!"

And "Palamon was a tall young man."—The place

Was knee-deep where she sat; her careless tresses,

A wreath of bull-rush rounded; about her stuck

Thousand fresh-water flowers of several colours;

That methought she appeared like the fair nymph

That feeds the lake with waters; or as Iris,

Newly dropt down from Heaven! Rings she made

Of rushes that grew by, and to 'em spoke

The prettiest posies: "Thus our true love's tied,

This you may loose, not me," and many a one.

And then she wept, and sung again, and sighed,

And with the same breath smiled, and kist her hand.

"I said the Lily was the Queenly Flower," and here, as in allegiance bound, follow some of the gayest of the Floral Court—the richly-clad. Fashion and culture have contributed so much to the aggrandizement of the beautiful tribe of Pelargoniums, or, as they are generally but erroneously called, Geraniums, that they now count a greater number of royal and illustrious titles in their family than any other species of flower can boast. The two branches who did me the honour of sitting for their portraits in the illustration, display a curious historical anachronism, being no less personages than the fair Ann Boleyn and the renowned patriot-king Caractacus.

The Lily and the Rose, so long unrivalled in the annals of Poesy, are no more the absolute monopolists they have been,