Puslapio vaizdai
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Stepping further into summer, comes the star-white Jasmine,—that sweet perfumer of the night, which only throws out its full fragrance when its sister stars are keeping watch in the sky; as if, when the song of the nightingale no longer cheered the darkness, it sent forth its silent aroma upon the listening air. Many a happy home does it garland, and peeps in at many a forbidden lattice, where Love and Beauty repose. Little did the proud courtiers and stately dames of Queen Elizabeth's day dream that this sweet-scented creeper (a sprig of which seemed to make the haughty haughtier still) would one day become 'so common as to cluster around and embower thousands of humble English cottages,—a degradation which, could they but have witnessed, would almost have made every plait of their starched ruffs bristle up, like "quills upon the fretful porcupine." Beautiful are its long, drooping, dark-green shoots, trailing around the trellis-work of a door-way, like a green curtain embroidered with silver flowers; while here and there the queenly Moss-Rose, creeping in and out like the threads of a fanciful tapestry, shows its crimson face amid the embowered green, -a beautiful lady peeping through a leaf-clad casement.

A lover on the Indian Sea,
Sighing for her left far behind,
Inhaled the scented Jasmine tree,
As it perfumed the evening wind:
Shoreward he steered at dawn of day,

And saw the coast all round embowered,
And brought a starry sprig away,

For her by whose green cot it flowered.

Woodbine, or Honeysuckle.

And oft when from that scorching shore,

In after years those odours came,
He pictured his green cottage door,
The shady porch, and window-frame,
Far, far away, across the foam :

The very Jasmine-flower that crept
Round the thatched roof about his home,
Where she he loved then safely slept.

Miller.

111

WOODBINE, or Honeysuckle....Affection.

This elegant, climbing shrub at once delights the eye and gratifies the smell, by the exquisite fragrance of its blossoms; while it confers on those humble dwellings in the rural districts of England and America, a character of cheerfulness unknown in other countries. It begins to flower in May, and puts forth its blossoms until the end of summer. It is chosen as the emblem of affection, from its clinging to trees and lattices with all the ardour and constancy of a weak, confiding woman, clinging to one of the stronger, sterner sex, in prosperity and in adversity.

Copious of flowers, the woodbine pale and wan,
But well compensating her sickly looks

With never-cloying odours, early and late.

Cowper.

112

Woodbine, or Honeysuckle.

Sister, sister, what dost thou twine?

I am weaving a wreath of the wild Woodbine ;
I have streaked it without like the sunset hue,
And silvered it white with the morning dew:

And there is not a perfume which on the breeze blows
From the lips of the Pink or the mouth of the Rose,
That's sweeter than mine—that's sweeter than mine:
I have mingled them all in my wild Woodbine.

Miller.

A Honeysuckle, on the sunny side,
Hung round the lattices its fragrant trumpets.

Ah! could you look into my heart,

And watch your image there!

Miss Landon.

You would own the sunny loveliness

Affection makes it wear.

Mrs. Osgood.

The pensive soul with ardent thirsting turns
To heaven and earth to seek its fill of love.

MacKellar.

Oh! there is one affection which no stain
Of earth can ever darken;—when two find,
The softer and the manlier, that a chain

Of kindred taste has fastened mind to mind.
'Tis an attraction from all sense refined;
The good can only know it; 'tis not blind,
As love is unto baseness; its desire

Is but with hands entwined to lift our being higher.

Percival.

CowSLIP....Pensiveness.

The solitary Cowslip was known to the old English poets as the "sweet nun of the fields," and has been immortalized in " Shakspeare's Midsummer Night's Dream." In America, the Cowslip may be found from Maine to Missouri. Its hues are not gaudy, but winning; and the whole appearance of the flower, as it blooms in some solitary vale, or on some gentle slope, expresses the idea of pensive beauty.

The rose its blushes need not lend,
Nor yet the lily with them blend,
To captivate my eyes:

Give me a cheek the heart obeys,
And, sweetly mutable, displays
Its feelings as they rise;

Features, where pensive, more than gay,
Save when a rising smile doth play,
The sober thoughts you see;
Eyes that all soft and tender seem,
And kind affections round them beam,
But most of all on me.

Frisbie.

There is a mood,

(I sing not to the vacant and the young,)
There is a kindly mood of melancholy

That wings the soul, and points her to the skies.

Dyer

Oh! fragrant dwellers of the lea,
When first the wildwood rings
With each sound of vernal minstrelsy,
When fresh the green grass springs!
What can the blessed spring restore
More gladdening than your charms?
Bringing the memory once more
Of lovely fields and farms!

Of thickets, breezes, birds, and flowers;
Of life's unfolding prime;

Of thoughts as cloudless as the hours;
Of souls without a crime.

Oh! blessed, blessed do ye seem,

For, even now, I turned,

With soul athirst for wood and stream,

From streets that glared and burned.
From the hot town, where mortal care
His crowded fold doth pen;
Where stagnates the polluted air
In many a sultry den.

And ye are here! and ye are here!
Drinking the dew-like wine,
Midst living gales and waters clear,
And heaven's unstinted shine.

I care not that your little life

Will quickly have run through,

And the sward, with summer children rife,

Keep not a trace of you.

For again, again, on dewy plain,

I trust to see you rise,

When spring renews the wildwood strain,

And bluer gleam the skies.

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