Flower-de-Luce, the flower of chivalry-with a sword for its leaf, and a Lily for its heart.

Harebells

John Ruskin.

Blue bells, on blue hills, where the sky is blue, Here's a little blue-gowned maid come to look at you; Here's a little child would fain, at the vesper time, Catch the music of your hearts, hear the harebells

chime

"Little hare, little hare," softly prayeth she,
"Come, come across the hills, and ring the bells
Emily M. P. Hickey.

for me."

The blue Flag: a little too showy and gaudy, like some women's bonnets.

Henry David Thoreau.

Sweet lavender! I love thy flower

Of meek and modest blue,

Which meets the morn and evening hour,
The storm, the sunshine, and the shower,
And changeth not its hue.

Agnes Strickland.

The Rose

The Historical Rose

The Rose doth deserve the chiefest and most principall place among all flowers whatsoever; being not only esteemed for his beautie, vertues, and his fragrant smell, but also because it is the honour and ornament of our English Sceptre.

John Gerarde, 1560.

"The brawl to-day

Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden
Shall send, between the red Rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night."

Near that old Rose named from its hundred leaves

The lovely Bridal Roses sweetly blush;

The Climbing Rose across the trellis weaves
A canopy suffused with tender flush;
The Damask Roses swing on tiny trees,

And here the Seven Sisters glow like floral pleiades.

John Russell Hayes.

Each New Year is a leaf of our love's rose;
It falls, but quick another rose-leaf grows.
So is the flower from year to year the same,
But richer, for the dead leaves feed its flame.
Richard Watson Gilder.

Omar's Rose

Look to the Rose that blows about us-"Lo, "Laughing," she says, "into this World I blow: "At once the silken Tassel of my Purse "Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throws."

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

O stately Roses, yellow, white, and red,
As Ómar loved you, so we love to-day.
Some Roses with the vanished years have sped,
And some our mother's mothers laid away
Among their bridal gown's soft silken folds,
Where each pale petal for their sons a precious
memory holds.

And some we find among the yellowed leaves
Of slender albums, once the parlor's pride,
Where faint-traced Ivy-pattern interweaves

The mottoes over which the maiden sighed.
O faded Roses, did they match your red,
Those fair young cheeks whose color long ago
with years has fled?
John Russell Hayes.

VAMA

The Moss Rose

The angel of the flowers one day,
Beneath a rose-tree sleeping lay,—
That spirit to whose charge 'tis given
To bathe young buds in dews of heaven.
Awaking from his light repose,
The angel whispered to the rose:
"O fondest object of my care,

Still fairest found, where all are fair;

For the sweet shade thou giv'st to me
Ask what thou wilt, 't is granted thee."
"Then," said the rose, with deepened glow,
"On me another grace bestow.'

The spirit paused, in silent thought,

What grace was there that flower had not?
'Twas but a moment,-o'er the rose
A veil of moss the angel throws,
And, robed in nature's simplest weed,
Could there a flower that rose exceed?
From the German of Krummacher.

The Poppy

"The Garden Hypnotist"

The poppy, though brief of days, is the garden hypnotist. Look steadily at a mass of these glowing flowers blending their multicolors in the full sunlight. At first their brilliancy is blinding; then as the petals undulate on the slender stems, your attention is riveted as if a hundred eyes returned your gaze, and drowsiness steals over you, for each flower bears the spell of the hypnotic pod, whose seeds bring sleep. "The Garden of a Commuter's Wife." (Mabel Osgood Wright.)

We are slumbrous poppies

Lords of Lethe downs,

Some awake, and some asleep,

Sleeping in our crowns.

What perchance our dreams may know,
Let our serious beauty show.

Leigh Hunt.

I have in my hand a small red Poppy which I gathered on Whit-Sunday in the palace of the Cæsars. It is an intensely simple, intensely floral flower. All silk and flame, a scarlet cup! perfect edged all round, seen among the wild grass far away like a burning coal fallen from Heaven's altars. You cannot have a more complete, a more stainless type