Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/367

233 To make of parts an union,

But on a sudden all were gone,

At which I stopt; said Love, these be

The true resemblances of thee;

For as these flowers, thy joyes must die,

And in the turning of an eye;

And all thy hopes of her must wither

Like those short sweets ere knit together.

Though so similar in nature and appearance, yet Pinks and Carnations are expressive of very opposite sentiments in floral language. A Pink, presented by a gentleman to a lady, is an offer of marriage:—a Carnation, given by a lady to a gentleman, signifies her refusal of his addresses. On this very important point rests the chief events of the illustrative romance which accompanies the plate.

The simple, delicate, and fragile (Campanula rotundifolia) is a very common way-side flower, as well as a constant guest in the more lonely scenery of the mountain and moorland. It does not shun even the dusty turnpike roads, but suffers its exquisitely formed bells of twilight blue to gleam out, and tremble and wave over the oft-trodden path, as gracefully as in the still solitude of the heathery moor. The extreme thinness of the stems, and their buoyant elasticity, give a bounding, dancing effect to the flowers when stirred by the lightest breeze; and they do, indeed, seem "to a fanciful" eye, to be ringing out a merry peal of fairy-like music:—

Have ye ever heard, in the twilight dim,

A low soft strain,