ST. JOHN'S WORT.... Superstition.

This plant is an appropriate emblem of superstition; for it has always been regarded with reverence by the peasantry of Europe, on account of its real and supposed virtues. It was supposed to possess the power of defending persons from phantoms and spectres, and driving away all evil spirits. Its large, yellow flower grows close to the earth, and resembles a small wheel of fireworks.

'Tis a history

Handed from ages down; a nurse's tale—

Which children, open-eyed and mouthed, devour; And thus as garrulous ignorance relates,

We learn it and believe.

Southey.

A fortune-telling host,

As numerous as the stars could boast,
Matrons, who toss the cup, and see
The grounds of fate in grounds of tea.

Gipsies, who every ill can cure,

Except the ill of being poor,

Churchill.

Who charms 'gainst love and agues sell,
Who can in hen-roost set a spell,

Prepared by arts, to them best known,
To catch all feet except their own,

Who as to fortune can unlock it,
As easily as pick a pocket.

Churchill.

We may smile, or coldly sneer,

The while such ghostly tales we hear,—
And wonder why they were believed,
And how wise men could be deceived:—

Bathing our renovated sight

In the free gospel's glorious light,
We marvel it was ever night!

Mrs. Hale.

This present life seems full of mysteries;
The vulgar mind, to superstition prone,
In nature's workings fearful omens sees,

And shrinks aghast from terrors of its own
Absurd imagining. Despotic is the power
Of ignorance; and thousands live in fear
And die unnumbered times before the hour
That Heaven has set to end their being here.
The trustful, quiet, mighty thinker seeks
The beautiful and simple orderings
Of the Great Former of created things,
And God to him in guiding accents speaks.
Still, in the dealings of the Lord with men,
Some things there are beyond our human ken.
MacKellar.

Tam saw an unco sight!

Warlocks and witches in a dance;

Nae cotillon brent new frae France,

But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,
Put life an mettle in their heels.

A winnock bunker in the east,

There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast;
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge:
He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl.—
Coffins stood round like open presses,
That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses;
And by some devilish cantraip slight,
Each in its cauld hand held a light,—
By which heroic Tam was able
To note upon the haly table,

A murderer's banes in gibbet airns;
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns;
A thief, new cutted frae a rape,
Wi' his last gasp his gab did gape;
Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red-rusted;
Five scimiters, wi' murder crusted;
A garter, which a babe had strangled;
A knife, a father's throat had mangled,
Whom his ain son o' life bereft,
The gray hairs yet stack to the heft;
Wi' mair o' horrible and awfu',
Which ev'n to name wad be unlawfu'.

Burns.

VERVAIN....Enchantment.

Vervain was employed by the ancients in various kinds of divinations. They ascribed to it a thousand properties, and, among others, that of reconciling enemies. Whenever the Romans sent their heralds to offer peace or war to nations, one of them always carried a sprig of Vervain. The Druids, both in Gaul and Britain, regarded the Vervain with the same veneration as the misletoe, and offered sacrifices to the earth before they cut this plant in spring, which was a ceremony of great pomp. Though the Druids and their religion have passed away, the Vervain is still the plant of spells and enchantment. In the northern provinces of France, the shepherds gather it with ceremonies and words known only to themselves, and express its juices under certain phases of the moon. They insist that this plant enables them to cure their ailments, and to cast a spell on their daughters and cattle, by which they can make them conform to their wishes.

I'd wake the spell that sleeps within an herb,
And witch the lady till I know she's mine.

Peerbold.

Her overpowering presence made you
It would not be idolatry to kneel.

feel

Byron.

Her sacred beauty hath enchanted heaven,
And, had she lived before the siege of Troy,
Helen, whose beauty summoned Greece to arms,
And drew a thousand ships to Tenedos,
Had not been named in Homer's Iliad;
Her name had been in every line he wrote.

Marlowe.

Not all the charms that superstition gave
To plants in lonely forests found,

Could work such magic in Love's doting slave,
As the voice which his wishes crowned.

Anon.

A voice of laughter—a voice of glee!
Among the maidens, who happy as she?
By love's enchantment her thrilling breast
Is wildly, witchingly, over-blest:

And gushing joys, like the sun in May,
Enliven the noon of her bridal-day.

MacKellar.

Mysterious plant! whose golden tresses wave
With a sad beauty in the dying year,
Blooming amid November's frost severe,
Like a pale corpse-light o'er the recent grave.
If shepherds tell us true, thy wand hath power,
With gracious influence, to avert the harm

Of ominous planets.

Token, 1831.