Such as in Eden only dwelt,

When angels hovered round its bowers,
And long-haired Eve at morning knelt
In innocence amid the flowers:
While the whole air was, every way,
Filled with a perfume sweet as May.
And oft shall groups of children come,
Threading their way through shady places,
From many a peaceful English home,
The sunshine falling on their faces;
Starting with merry voice the thrush,

As through green lanes they wander singing, To gather the sweet Hawthorn bush;

Which, homeward in the evening bringing With smiling faces, they shall say,

'There's nothing half so sweet as May.' And many a poet yet unborn

Shall link its name with some sweet lay, And lovers oft at early morn

Shall gather blossoms of the May;
With eyes bright as the silver dews,
Which on the rounded May-buds sleep,
And lips, whose parted smiles diffuse

A sunshine o'er the watch they keep,
Shall open all their white array
Of pearls, ranged like the buds of May."
Spring shook the cloud on which she lay,
And silvered o'er the Hawthorn spray,
Then showered down the buds of May.

Miller.

With hope all pleases, nothing comes amiss.

Rogers.

And Hawthorn's early blooms appear,
Like youthful hope upon life's year.

Drayton.

Gay was the love of paradise he drew
And pictured in his fancy; he did dwell
Upon it till it had a life; he threw

A tint of heaven athwart it—who can tell

The yearnings of his heart, the charm, the spell,
That bound him to that vision?

Percival.

Love-lies-bleeding....Deserted Love.

This beautiful emblem of love, wounded and bereaved by fate, is a species of Amaranthus. The flower is of a reddish-purple hue, which circumstance suggests its

name.

A single rose is shedding

Its lovely lustre meek and pale:
It looks as planted by despair—
So white, so faint the slightest gale
Might whirl the leaves on high.

And on with many a step of pain,

Our weary race is sadly run;
And still, as on we plod our way,
We find, as life's gay dreams depart,
To close our being's troubled day,
Naught left us but a broken heart.

Byron.

Percival.

Nor would I change my buried love
For any heart of living mould,
No—for I am a hero's child—

I'll hunt my quarry in the wild;
And still my home this mansion make,
Of all unheeded and unheeding,

And cherish, for my warrior's sake,
The flower of Love-lies-bleeding.

Campbell.

Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,

As if its lid were charged with unshed tears.

Byron.

Myrtle....Love.

The Myrtle has ever been consecrated to Venus. At Rome, the temple of the goddess was surrounded by a grove of Myrtles; and in Greece, she was adorned under the name of Myrtilla. It was observed by the ancients, that, wherever the Myrtle grew, it excluded all other plants. So love, wherever it is permitted to grow, excludes all other feelings. The ladies of modern Rome retain a strong affection for this plant, preferring its odour to that of the most fragrant essences.

Our love came as the early dew

Comes unto drooping flowers;
Dropping its first sweet freshness on

Our life's dull, lonely hours.

Mrs. R. S. Nichols.

I.

Love is a celestial harmony

Of likely hearts, composed of stars' consent,
Which join together in sweet sympathy,

To work each other's joy and true content,

Which they have harboured since their first descent,
Out of their heavenly bowers, where they did see
And know each other here beloved to be.

Spenser.

I have done penance for contemning love;
Whose high imperious thoughts have punished me
With bitter fasts, with penitential groans,

With nightly tears, and daily heart-sore sighs.

The Myrtle on thy breast or brow

Shakspeare.

Would lively hope and love avow.

J. H. Wiffen.

Comfort cannot soothe

The heart whose life is centred in the thought
Of happy loves, once known, and still in hope,
Living with a consuming energy.

As in the sweetest bud

Percival.

The eating canker dwells, so eating love
Inhabits in the finest wits of all.

Shakspeare.

LILY OF THE VALLEY....Modesty.

The beautiful Lily of the Valley is the fit emblem of the union of beauty, simplicity, and love of retirement. It adds an indescribable charm to the spots where it blooms. Its snowy hues and general delicacy of appearance excite emotions of a kindred nature to those we experience in the company of one whose heart is free from guile, and whose manners are gentle and unpretending.

Lilacs then, and daffodillies,

And the nice-leaved, lesser Lilies,
Shading, like detected light,

Their little green-tipt lamps of white.

I had found out a sweet green spot,
Where a Lily was blooming fair;
The din of the city disturbed it not,
But the spirit that shades the quiet cot
With its wings of love was there.
I found that Lily's bloom,

When the day was dark and chill;
It smiled like a star in a misty gloom,
And it sent abroad a soft perfume,

Which is floating around me still.

The Lily, in whose snow-white bells
Simplicity delights and dwells.

Hunt.

Percival.

Balfour.