Flowers (original) (raw)
As for mortal man, his days are like those of green grass; like a blossom of the field is the way he blossoms forth. For a mere wind has to pass over it, and it is no more; and its place will acknowledge it no further. But the loving-kindness of Jehovah is from time indefinite even to time indefinite toward those fearing him, and his righteousness to the sons of sons, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.
~ David
Psalms 103:15-18
Flowers, sometimes known as blooms or blossoms, are the reproductive structures found in flowering plants (plants of the division Magnoliophyta, also called angiosperms). The biological function of a flower is to mediate the union of male sperm with female ovum in order to produce seeds. The process begins with pollination, is followed by fertilization, leading to the formation and dispersal of the seeds. For the higher plants, seeds are the next generation, and serve as the primary means by which individuals of a species are dispersed across the landscape. The grouping of flowers on a plant is called the inflorescence.
In addition to serving as the reproductive organs of flowering plants, flowers have long been admired and used by humans, mainly to beautify their environment but also as a source of food.
The snowdrop and primrose our woodlands adorn,
And violets bathe in the wet o' the morn. ~ Robert Burns
Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold. ~ James Russell Lowell
The mysteries that cups of flowers infold
And'all the gorgeous sights which fairies do behold. ~ William Wordsworth
Without our fully realizing it, flowers would become for us an expression in form of that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately formless within ourselves. ~ Eckhart Tolle
Color is the ultimate in art. It is still and will always remain a mystery to us, we can only apprehend it intuitively in flowers. ~ Philipp Otto Runge
- Flowers are the sweetest things that God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into.
- Henry Ward Beecher, Life Thoughts (1858), p. 234.
- The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.- William Cowper, Olney hymns, 'Light Shining Out of Darkness', June 1778.
- Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain,
Of his unrivall'd pencil.- William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book VI, line 241.
- As for mortal man, his days are like those of green grass;
Like a blossom of the field is the way he blossoms forth.
For a mere wind has to pass over it, and it is no more;
And its place will acknowledge it no further.
But the loving-kindness of Jehovah is from time indefinite even to time indefinite
Toward those fearing him, and his righteousness to the sons of sons,
to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.
How cruel of you. What part of what you see here is carefree? If only you could understand the sadness of the ones who grow the delicate flowers of buffoonery, protecting them from but the slightest gust of wind and always on the verge of despair!
- Osamu Dazai, The Flowers of Buffoonery (1935).
But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the breeze
A hundred miles away.- Robert Frost, Wind and Window Flower, A Boy’s Will (1915)
There grew a little flower
'Neath a great oak tree:
When the tempest 'gan to lower
Little heeded she:
No need had she to cower,
For she dreaded not its power –
She was happy in the bower
Of her great oak tree!
Of her great oak tree!
Sing hey, Lackaday!
Sing hey, Lackaday!
Let the tears fall free
For the pretty little flower
And the great oak tree!- W. S. Gilbert, from Ruddigore (1887).
The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.
- Jean Giraudoux, The Enchanted (1933).
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.- Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751).
Gather ye Rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying.- Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time (1648).
Go, happy rose, and, interwove
With other flowers, bind my love.
Tell her, too, she must not be
Longer flowing, longer free,
That so oft has fetter'd me.- Robert Herrick, To the Rose (1648).
Yellow japanned buttercups and star-disked dandelions, just as we see them lying in the grass, like sparks that have leaped from the kindling sun of summer.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859), X.
Above his head
Four lily stalks did their white honours wed
To make a coronal; and round him grew
All tendrils green, of every bloom and hue,
Together intertwined and trammell'd fresh;
The vine of glossy sprout; the ivy mesh,
Shading its Ethiop berries.- John Keats, Endymion (1818), Book IV, line 413.
Young playmates of the rose and daffodil,
Be careful ere ye enter in, to fill
Your baskets high
With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines
Savory latter-mint, and columbines.- John Keats, Endymion (1818), Book IV, line 575.
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.- Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1120), Stanza 19. FitzGerald's translation.
One thing is certain and the rest is lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.- Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1120), Stanza 63. FitzGerald's translation.
There were flowers in her hair
Like an April diadem;- Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Forget-Me-Not, 1844 (1843, posthumous), Love's Signal Flower
It is so wrong to think of the beauty of flowers only when they are at their height of blooming; bud and half developed flower, fading blossom and seed pod are as lovely, and often more interesting.
- Clare Leighton, Four Hedges: A Gardener’s Chronicle, Victor Gollancz, 1935. Also quoted in Murphy, Edward F., ‘’The Crown Treasury of Relevant Quotations’’ , New York : Crown Publishers 1978 (pg. 290).
Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold.- James Russell Lowell, To the Dandelion, st. 1.
"Aye," said Math, "let us seek, thou and I, by our magic and enchantment to conjure a wife for him out of flowers"...And then they took the flowers of the oak, and the flowers of the broom, and the flowers of the meadowsweet, and from those they called forth the very fairest and best endowed maiden that mortal ever saw, and baptized her with the baptism they used at that time, and named her Blodeuedd.
- "Math Son of Mathonwy", Mabinogion (Jones and Jones, 1989, p. 68).
Anemones and seas of gold,
And new-blown lilies of the river,
And those sweet flow'rets that unfold
Their buds on Camadera's quiver.- Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), Light of the Harem.
There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords.
- John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916).
Where flowers degenerate man cannot live.
- Napoleon, as quoted in The table talk and opinions of Napoleon Buonaparte (1868), p. 148.
Say it with flowers.
- Patrick O'Keefe (1872-1934); slogan coined in 1917, for the Society of American Florists, as quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999), p. 8.
I read flowers, not scriptures.
- Laline Paull, The Bees (2014), cited from the hardcover edition published by Harper Collins ISBN 978-0-06-233115-1, p. 137
I know that as night and shadows are good for flowers, and moonlight and dews are better than a continual sun, so is Christ's absence of special use, and that it hath some nourishing virtue in it, and giveth sap to humility, and putteth an edge on hunger, and furnisheth a fair field for faith to put forth itself.
- Samuel Rutherford Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895). p. 277.
Color is the ultimate in art. It is still and will always remain a mystery to us, we can only apprehend it intuitively in flowers.
- Philipp Otto Runge, in a letter (February 1802) quoted in L. Eitner Neoclassicism and Romanticism, 1750-1850: Enlightenment (1970), p. 150.
Thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The azur'd harebell, like thy veins.- William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act TV, scene 2, line 220.
These flowers are like the pleasures of the world.
- William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act IV, scene 2, line 296.
When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight.- William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), Act V, scene 2, line 904.
In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white;
Like sapphire, pearl and rich embroidery.- William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597; published 1602), ActV, scene 5, line 74.
I know a bank, where the wild thyme blows
Where ox-lips, and the nodding violet grows;
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act II, scene 1, line 251. Changed by Stervens to "whereon the wild thyme blows," and "luscious woodbine" to "lush woodbine".
To strew thy green with flowers; the yellows, blues,
The purple violets, and marigolds.- William Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre (c. 1607-08), Act IV, scene 1, line 15.
The fairest flowers o' the season
Are our carnations and streak'd gillyvors.- William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act IV, scene 4, line 81.
No matter how expensive or beautiful the vase, without the flower, it has no meaning.
- Sanu Sharma, Tee Saat Din
Age cannot Love destroy,
But perfidy can blast the flower,
Even when in most unwary hour
It blooms in Fancy's bower.
Age cannot Love destroy,
But perfidy can rend the shrine
In which its vermeil splendours shine.- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Untitled (1810); titled "Love's Rose" by William Michael Rossetti in Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1870).
The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us; visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, st. 1 (1816).
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearl'd Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Question, st. 2 (1820).
And like a prophetess of May
Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.- Percy Bysshe Shelley, To Jane: The Invitation (1822), line 17.
So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower;
No more doth flourish after first decay,
That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower
Of many a lady and many a paramour.
Gather therefore the rose whilst yet in prime,
For soon comes age that will her pride deflower.
Gather the rose of love whilst yet in time,
Whilst loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime.- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1589-96), Book II, Canto XII, Stanza 75.
Roses red and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew.- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1589-96), Book HI, Canto VI, Stanza 6.
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;"
And the white rose weeps, "She is late;"
The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;"
And the lily whispers, "I wait."- Alfred Tennyson, Maud; A Monodrama (1855), Part I, section xxii, stanza 10.
The slender acacia would not shake
One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake,
They sighed for the dawn and thee.- Alfred Tennyson, Maud; A Monodrama (1855), Part XXII, Stanza 8.
The daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue;
And polyanthus of unnumbered dyes.- James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring (1728), line 529.
One morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun. Prior to this momentous event that heralds an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants, the planet had already been covered in vegetation for millions of years... Much later, those delicate and fragrant beings we call flowers would come to play an essential part in the evolution of consciousness of another species. Humans would increasingly be drawn to and fascinated by them. As the consciousness of human beings developed, flowers were most likely the first thing they came to value that had no utilitarian purpose for them, that is to say, was not linked in some way to survival. They provided inspiration to countless artists, poets, and mystics... Jesus tells us to contemplate the flowers and learn from then how to live. The Buddha is said to have given a “silent sermon” once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile... Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature.
The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feelings of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition. Without our fully realizing it, flowers would become for us an expression in form of that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately formless within ourselves. Flowers... would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless. They not only had a scent that was delicate and pleasing to humans, but also brought a fragrance from the realm of spirit. Using the word “enlightenment” in a wider sense than the conventionally accepted one, we could look upon flowers as the enlightenment of plants.
- Eckhart Tolle, in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005)
One cannot grow fine flowers in a thin soil.
- Virginia Woolf, Women and Writing (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), p. 54. Also in The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1932. Hogarth Press. 1986. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-7012-0670-3.
Now when the primrose makes a splendid show,
And lilies face the March-winds in full blow,
And humbler growths as moved with one desire
Put on, to welcome spring, their best attire,
Poor Robin is yet flowerless; but how gay
With his red stalks upon this sunny day!- William Wordsworth, Poor Robin (1847).
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.- William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (1803).
Quotes reported in John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667, 1674).
- Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
- Book IV, line 256.
- A wilderness of sweets.
- Book V, line 294.
- The bright consummate flower.
- Book V, line 481.
- And touched by her fair tendance, gladlier grew.
- Book VIII, line 47.
- Just then return'd at shut of evening flowers.
- Book EX, line 278.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
[edit]
Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 315-320.
- Sweet letters of the angel tongue,
I've loved ye long and well,
And never have failed in your fragrance sweet
To find some secret spell, ,
A charm that has bound me with witching power,
For mine is the old belief,
That midst your sweets and midst your bloom,
There's a soul in every leaf!- M. M. Ballou, Flowers.
- Take the flower from my breast, I pray thee,
Take the flower, too, from out my tresses:
And then go hence; for, see, the night is fair,
The stars rejoice to watch thee on thy way.- Third Poem in Bard of the Dimbovitza; Rumanian Folksongs. Collected by Helens Vacaresco. English by Carmen Sylva and Alma Strettell. (Quoted by Galsworthy, on fly leaf of The Dark Flower).
- As for marigolds, poppies, hollyhocks, and valorous sunflowers, we shall never have a garden without them, both for their own sake, and for the sake of old-fashioned folks, who used to love them.
- Henry Ward Beecher, Star Papers, A Discourse of Flowers.
- Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like, the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock.
- Henry Ward Beecher, Star Papers, A Discourse of Flowers.
- Flowers are Love's truest language; they betray,
Like the divining rods of Magi old,
Where precious wealth lies buried, not of gold,
But love, strong love, that never can decay!- Park Benjamin, Sonnet, Flowers, Love's Truest Language.
- Thick on the woodland floor
Gay company shall be,
Primrose and Hyacinth
And frail Anemone,
Perennial Strawberry-bloom,
Woodsorrel's pencilled veil,
Dishevel'd Willow-weed
And Orchis purple and pale.- Robert Bridges, Idle Flowers.
- I have loved flowers that fade,
Within whose magic tents
Rich hues have marriage made
With sweet unmemoried scents.- Robert Bridges, Shorter Poems, Book n. 13.
- Brazen helm of daffodillies,
With a glitter toward the light.
Purple violets for the mouth,
Breathing perfumes west and south;
And a sword of flashing lilies,
Holden ready for the fight.- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Hector in the Garden.
- Ah, ah, Qytherea! Adonis is dead.
She wept tear after tear, with the blood which was shed, ,
And both turned into flowers for the earth's
Her tears, to the wind-flower, his blood, to the rose.- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lament for Adonis, Stanza 6.
- The flower-girl's prayer to buy roses and pinks,
Held out in the smoke, like stars by day.- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Soul's Travelling.
- Yet here's eglantine,
Here's ivy!, take them as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
And tell thy soul their roots are left in mine.- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, translated from the Portuguese. XLIV.
- The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland glade and glen.- William Cullen Bryant, Death of the Flowers.
- Where fall the tears of love the rose appears,
And where the ground is bright with friendship's tears,
Forget-me-not, and violets, heavenly blue,
Spring glittering with the cheerful drops like dew.- William Cullen Bryant, translation of N. Miller's Paradise of Tears.
- Who that has loved knows not the tender tale
Which flowers reveal, when lips are coy to tell?- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Corn Flowers. The First Violets, Book I, Stanza 1.
- Mourn, little harebells, o'er the lea;
Ye stately foxgloves fair to see!
Ye woodbines, hanging bonnilie
In scented bowers!
Ye roses on your thorny tree
The first o' flow'rs.- Robert Burns, Elegy on Capt. Matthew Henderson.
- Now blooms the lily by the bank,
The primrose down the brae;
The hawthorn's budding in the glen,
And milkwhite is the slae.- Robert Burns, Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots.
- The snowdrop and primrose our woodlands adorn,
And violets bathe in the wet o' the morn.- Robert Burns, My Nannie's Awa.
- Rose, what is become of thy delicate hue?
And where is the violet's beautiful blue?
Does aught of its sweetness the blossom beguile?
That meadow, those daisies, why do they not smile?- John Byrom, A Pastoral, Stanza 8.
- Ye field flowers! the gardens eclipse you 'tis true:
Yet wildings of nature, I dote upon you,
For ye waft me to summers of old,
When the earth teem'd around me with fairy delight,
And when daisies and buttercups gladden 'd my sight,
Like treasures of silver and gold.- Thomas Campbell, Field Flowers.
- The berries of the brier rose
Have lost their rounded pride:
The bitter-sweet chrysanthemums
Are drooping heavy-eyed.- Alice Cary, Faded Leaves.
- I know not which I love the most,
Nor which the comeliest shows,
The timid, bashful violet
Or the royal-hearted rose:
The pansy in her purple dress,
The pink with cheek of red,
Or the faint, fair heliotrope, who hangs,
Like a bashful maid her head.- Phoebe Cary, Spring Flowers.
- They know the time to go!
The fairy clocks strike their inaudible hour
In field and woodland, and each punctual flower
Bows at the signal an obedient head
And hastes to bed.- Susan Coolidge, Time to Go.
- Flowers are words
Which even a babe may understand.- Bishop Coxe, The Singing of Birds.
- And all the meadows, wide unrolled,
Were green and silver, green and gold,
Where buttercups and daisies spun
Their shining tissues in the sun.- Julia C. R. Dorr, Unanswered.
- The harebells nod as she passes by,
The violet lifts its tender eye,
The ferns bend her steps to greet,
And the mosses creep to her dancing feet.- Julia C. R. Dorr, Over the Wall.
- Up from the gardens floated the perfume
Of roses and myrtle, in their perfect bloom.- Julia C. R. Dorr, Vashti's Scroll, line 91.
- The rose is fragrant, but it fades in time:
The violet sweet, but quickly past the prime*
White lilies hang their heads, and soon decay,
And white snow in minutes melts away.- John Dryden, translation, from Theocritus. The Despairing Lover, line 57.
- The flowers of the forest are a' wede away.
- Jane Elliott, The Flowers of the Forest.
- Why does the rose her grateful fragrance yield,
And yellow cowslips paint the smiling field?- John Gay, Panthea, line 71.
- They speak of hope to the fainting heart,
With a voice of promise they come and part,
They sleep in dust through the wintry hours,
They break forth in glory, bring flowers, bright flowers!- Felicia Hemans, Bring Flowers.
- Through the laburnum's dropping gold
Rose the light shaft of orient mould,
And Europe's violets, faintly sweet,
Purpled the moss-beds at its feet.- Felicia Hemans, Palm-Tree.
- Faire pledges of a fruitful tree
Why do yee fall so fast?
Your date is not so past
But you may stay yet here awhile
To blush and gently smile
And go at last.- Robert Herrick, To Blossoms.
- The daisy is fair, the day-lily rare,
The bud o' the rose as sweet as it's bonnie.- James Hogg, Avid Joe Nicolson's Nannie.
- What are the flowers of Scotland,
All others that excel?
The lovely flowers of Scotland,
All others that excel!
The thistle's purple bonnet,
And bonny heather bell,
Oh, they're the flowers of Scotland.
All others that excel!- James Hogg, The Flowers of Scotland.
- I remember, I remember
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs, where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday, ,
The tree is living yet.- Thomas Hood, I Remember, I Remember.
- I may not to the world impart
The secret of its power,
But treasured in my inmost heart
I keep my faded flower.- Ellen C. Howarth, 'Tis but a Little Faded Flower.
- 'Tis but a little faded flower,
But oh, how fondly dear!
'Twill bring me back one golden hour,
Through many a weary year.- Ellen C. Howarth, 'Tis but a Little Faded Flower.
- Growing one's own choice words and fancies
In orange tubs, and beds of pansies;
One's sighs and passionate declarations,
In odorous rhetoric of carnations.- Leigh Hunt, Love-Letters Made of Flowers.
- Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn
The shrine of Flora in her early May.- John Keats, Dedication to Leigh Hunt.
- * * * the rose
Blendeth its odor with the violet,
Solution sweet.- John Keats, Eve of St. Agnes, Stanza 36.
- And O and O,
The daisies blow,
And the primroses are waken'd;
And the violets white
Sit in silver plight,
And the green bud's as long as the spike end.- John Keats, in a letter to Haydon.
- Underneath large blue-bells tented
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not.- John Keats, Ode, Bards of Passion and of Mirth.
- And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not.- John Keats, Ode, Bards of Passion and of Mirth.
- The loveliest flowers the closest cling to earth,
And they first feel the sun: so violets blue;
So the soft star-like primrose, drenched in dew ,
The happiest of Spring's happy, fragrant birth.- John Keble, Miscellaneous Poems. Spring Show.
- Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in the earth's firmament do shine.- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Flowers, Stanza 1.
- Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining,
Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day,
Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining,
Buds that open only to decay.- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Flowers, Stanza 6.
- The flaming rose gloomed swarthy red;
The borage gleams more blue;
And low white flowers, with starry head,
Glimmer the rich dusk through.- George MacDonald, Songs of the Summer Night, Part in.
- And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies.- Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to his Love.
- The foxglove, with its stately bells
Of purple, shall adorn thy dells;
The wallflower, on each rifted rock,
From liberal blossoms shall breathe down,
(Gold blossoms frecked with iron-brown,)
Its fragrance; while the hollyhock,
The pink, and the carnation vie
With lupin and with lavender,
To decorate the fading year;
And larkspurs, many-hued, shall drive
Gloom from the groves, where red leaves lie,
And Nature seems but half alive.- D. M. Moir, The Birth of the Flowers, Stanza 14.
- Yet, no, not words, for they
But half can tell love's feeling;
Sweet flowers alone can say
What passion fears revealing:
A once bright rose's wither'd leaf,
A tow'ring lily broken, ,
Oh, these may paint a grief
No words could e'er have spoken.- Thomas Moore, The Language of Flowers.
- The Wreath's of brightest myrtle wove
With brilliant tears of bliss among it,
And many a rose leaf cull'd by Love
To heal his lips when bees have stung it.- Thomas Moore, The Wreath and the Chain.
- Forget-me-not, and violets, heavenly blue,
Spring, glittering with the cheerful drops like dew.- N. Muller, The Paradise of Tears. translation. by Bryant.
- "A milkweed, and a buttercup, and cowslip,"
said sweet Mary,
"Are growing in my garden-plot, and this I call
my dairy."- Peter Newell, Her Dairy.
- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! the flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.- Peter Newell, Wild Flowers.
- He bore a simple wild-flower wreath:
Narcissus, and the sweet brier rose;
Vervain, and flexile thyme, that breathe
Rich fragrance; modest heath, that glows
With purple bells; the amaranth bright,
That no decay, nor fading knows,
Like true love's holiest, rarest light;
And every purest flower, that blows
In that sweet time, which Love most blesses,
When spring on summer's confines presses.- Thomas Love Peacock, Rhododaphne, Canto I, line 107.
- In Eastern lands they talk in flowers,
And they tell in a garland their loves and cares;
Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers,
On its leaves a mystic language Dears.- Percival, The Language of Flowers.
- Here blushing Flora paints th' enamell'd ground.
- Alexander Pope, Windsor Forest.
- Here eglantine embalm'd the air,
Hawthorne and hazel mingled there;
The primrose pale, and violet flower,
Found in each cliff a narrow bower;
Fox-glove and nightshade, side by side,
Emblems of punishment and pride,
Group'd their dark hues with every stain
The weather-beaten crags retain.- Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake, Canto I, Stanza 12.
- There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets.- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Question.
- Day stars ! that ope your frownless eyes to twinkle
From rainbow galaxies of earth's creation,
And dew-drops on her lonely altars sprinkle
As a libation.- Horace Smith, Hymn to the Flowers.
- Ye bright Mosaics! that with storied beauty,
The floor of Nature's temple tesselate,
What numerous emblems of instructive duty
Your forms create!- Horace Smith, Hymn to the Flowers.
- Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a brere;
Sweet is the juniper, but sharp his bough;
Sweet is the eglantine, but sticketh nere;
Sweet is the firbloome, but its braunches rough;
Sweet is the cypress, but its rynd is tough;
Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill;
Sweet is the broome-flowre, but yet sowre enough;
And sweet is moly, but his root is ill.- Edmund Spenser, Amoretti, Sonnet XXVI.
- The violets ope their purple heads;
The roses blow, the cowslip springs.- Jonathan Swift, Answer to a Scandalous Poem, line 150.
- Primrose-eyes each morning ope
In their cool, deep beds of grass;
Violets make the air that pass
Tell-tales of their fragrant slope.- Bayard Taylor, Home and Travel, the Cloven Pine, line 57.
- The aquilegia sprinkled on the rocks
A scarlet rain; the yellow violet
Sat in the chariot of its leaves; the phlox
Held spikes of purple flame in meadows wet,
And all the streams with vernal-scented reed
Were fringed, and streaky bells of miskodeed.- Bayard Taylor, Home and Travel, Mon-Da-Min, Stanza 17.
- With roses musky-breathed,
And drooping daffodilly,
And silver-leaved lily.
And ivy darkly-wreathed,
I wove a crown before her,
For her I love so dearly.- Alfred Tennyson, Anacreontics.
- The gold-eyed kingcups fine,
The frail bluebell peereth over
Rare broidery of the purple clover.- Alfred Tennyson, A Dirge, Stanza 6.
- Here are cool mosses deep,
And thro' the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.- Alfred Tennyson, The Lotos-Eaters, Choric Song, Part I.
- Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun. Prior to this momentous event that heralds an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants, the planet had already been covered in vegetation for millions of years. The first flower probably did not survive for long, and flowers must have remained rare and isolated phenomena, since conditions were most likely not yet favorable for a widespread flowering to occur. One day, however, a critical threshold was reached, and suddenly there would have been an explosion of color and scent all over the planet – if a perceiving consciousness had been there to witness it. Much later, those delicate and fragrant beings we call flowers would come to play an essential part in the evolution of consciousness of another species. Humans would increasingly be drawn to and fascinated by them.
- As the consciousness of human beings developed, flowers were most likely the first thing they came to value that had no utilitarian purpose for them, that is to say, was not linked in some way to survival. They provided inspiration to countless artists, poets, and mystics. Jesus tells us to contemplate the flowers and learn from then how to live. The Buddha is said to have given a “silent sermon” once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile. He is said to have been the only one who had understood the sermon. According to legend, that smile (that is to say, realization) was handed down by twentyeight successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen.
- Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005)
- Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature. The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feelings of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition. Without our fully realizing it, flowers would become for us an expression in form of that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately formless within ourselves. Flowers... would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless. They not only had a scent that was delicate and pleasing to humans, but also brought a fragrance from the realm of spirit. Using the word “enlightenment” in a wider sense than the conventionally accepted one, we could look upon flowers as the enlightenment of plants... they are, of course, temporary manifestations of the underlying one Life, one Consciousness. Their special significance and the reason why humans feel such fascination for and affinity with them can be attributed to their ethereal quality.
- Along the river's summer walk,
The withered tufts of asters nod;
And trembles on its arid stalk
The hoar plume of the golden-rod.
And on a ground of sombre fir,
And azure-studded juniper,
The silver birch its buds of purple shows,
And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild-rose!- John Greenleaf Whittier, The Last Walk in Autumn_._
- But when they had unloosed the linen band,
Which swathed the Egyptian's body, lo! was found,
Closed in the wasted hollow of her hand,
A little seed, which, sown in English ground,
Did wondrous snow of starry blossoms bear,
And spread rich odours through our springtide air.- Oscar Wilde, Athanasia, Stanza 2.
- The very flowers are sacred to the poor.
- William Wordsworth, Admonition.
- To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often he too deep for tears.- William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality.
- And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.- William Wordsworth, Lines Written in Early Spring.
- The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.
- William Wordsworth, Sonnet. Not Love, Not War, Nor, etc.
- Hope smiled when your nativity was cast,
Children of Summer!- William Wordsworth, Staffa Sonnets, Flowers on the Top of the Pillars at the Entrance of the Cave.
- The mysteries that cups of flowers infold
And'all the gorgeous sights which fairies do behold.- William Wordsworth, Stanzas written in Thomson's Castle of Indolence.
- There bloomed the strawberry of the wilderness;
The trembling eyebright showed her sapphire blue,
The thyme her purple, like the blush of Even;
And if the breath of some to no caress
Invited, forth they peeped so fair to view,
All kinds alike seemed favourites of Heaven.- William Wordsworth, The River Duddon, Flowers, VI.
- Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises.- William Wordsworth, To the Small Celandine.
Thy subtle charm is strangely given,
My fancy will not let thee be, ,
Then poise not thus 'twixt earth and heaven,
O white anemone!
Anemone, so well
Named of the wind, to which thou art all free.
- Within the woods,
Whose young and half transparent leaves scarce cast
A shade, gray circles of anemones
Danced on their stalks.- William Cullen Bryant, The Old Man's Counsel (1840), published in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review (1840), p. 111.
- From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed,
Anemones, auritulas, enriched
With shining meal o'er all their velvet leaves.- James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring (1728), line 533.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 26.
- Thy subtle charm is strangely given,
My fancy will not let thee be,
Then poise not thus 'twixt earth and heaven,
O white anemone!- Elaine Goodale, Anemone.
- Anemone, so well
Named of the wind, to which thou art all free.- George MacDonald, Wild Flowers, line 9.
- Or, bide thou where the poppy blows
With windflowers frail and fair.- William Cullen Bryant, The Arctic Lover.
- The little windflower, whose just opened eye
Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at.- William Cullen Bryant, A Winter Piece.
- The starry, fragile windflower,
Poised above in airy grace,
Virgin white, suffused with blushes,
Shyly droops her lovely face.- Elaine Goodale, The First Flowers.
- Thou lookest up with meek, confiding eye
Upon the clouded smile of April's face,
Unharmed though Winter stands uncertain by,
Eyeing with jealous glance each opening grace.- Jones Very, The Windflower.
White as the blossoms which the almond tree,
Above its bald and leafless branches bears.
- Like to an almond tree ymounted hye
On top of greene Selinis all alone,
With blossoms brave bedecked daintily;
Whose tender locks do tremble every one,
At everie little breath, that under heaven is blowne.- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1589-96), Book I, Canto VII, Stanza 32.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
[edit]
Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 19.
- Almond blossom, sent to teach us
That the spring days soon will reach us.- Edwin Arnold, Almond Blossoms.
- Blossom of the almond trees,
April's gift to April's bees.- Edwin Arnold, Almond Blossoms.
- White as the blossoms which the almond tree,
Above its bald and leafless branches bears.- Margaret Junkin Preston, The Royal Preacher, Stanza 5.
Amaranths such as crown the maids
That wander through Zamara's shades.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 20-21.
- Nosegays! leave them for the waking,
Throw them earthward where they grew
Dim are such, beside the breaking
Amaranths he looks unto.
Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do.- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Child Asleep.
- Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.- John Milton, Lycidas, line 149.
- Immortal amaranth, a flower which once
In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life,
Began to bloom, but soon for Man's offence,
To heav'n remov'd, where first it grew, there grows,
And flow'rs aloft shading the fount of life.- John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book III, line 353.
- Amaranths such as crown the maids
That wander through Zamara's shades.- Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), Light of the Harem, line 318.
Give me kind Amaryllis,
The wanton country maid.
- I care not for these ladies,
That must be wooed and prayed;
Give me kind Amaryllis,
The wanton country maid.
Nature art disdaineth;
Her beauty is her own.- Thomas Campion, I Care Not for These Ladies (1601), reported in Arthur Henry Bullen, More lyrics from the song-books of the Elizabethan Age (1888), p. 48.
- Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?- John Milton, Lycidas (1637), Line 64.
- Where, here and there, on sandy beaches
A milky-bell'd amaryllis blew.- Alfred Tennyson, The Daisy, Stanza 4; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 21.
The apple blossoms' shower of pearl,
Though blent with rosier hue,
As beautiful as woman's blush,
As evanescent too.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 38.
- Underneath an apple-tree
Sat a maiden and her lover;
And the thoughts within her he
Yearned, in silence, to discover.
Round them danced the sunbeams bright,
Green the grass-lawn stretched before them
While the apple blossoms white
Hung in rich profusion o'er them.- Will Carleton, Apple Blossoms.
- The apple blossoms' shower of pearl,
Though blent with rosier hue,
As beautiful as woman's blush,
As evanescent too.- L. E. Landon, Apple Blossoms.
- All day in the green, sunny orchard,
When May was a marvel of bloom,
I followed the busy bee-lovers
Down paths that were sweet with perfume.- Margaret E. Sangster, Apple Blossoms.
- Darlings of the forest!
Blossoming alone
When Earth's grief is sorest
For her jewels gone—
Ere the last snow-drift melts your tender buds have blown.- Rose T. Cooke, Trailing Arbutus; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 39.
- Pure and perfect, sweet arbutus
Twines her rosy-tinted wreath.- Elaine Goodale, The First Flowers; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 39.
- The shy little Mayflower weaves her nest,
But the south wind sighs o'er the fragrant loam,
And betrays the path to her woodland home.- Sarah Helen Whitman, The Waking of the Heart; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 39.
- The ash her purple drops forgivingly
And sadly, breaking not the general hush;
The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea,
Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush;
All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze,
Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days,
Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush.- James Russell Lowell, An Indian-Summer Reverie, Stanza 11, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 45.
- With her ankles sunken in asphodel
She wept for the roses of earth which fell.- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Calls on the Heart, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 45.
- By the streams that ever flow,
By the fragrant winds that blow
O'er the Elysian flow'rs;
By those happy souls who dwell
In yellow mead of asphodel.- Alexander Pope, Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 45.
The aster greets us as we pass
With her faint smile.
- Chide me not, laborious band!
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Apology, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 45.
- The Autumn wood the aster knows,
The empty nest, the wind that grieves,
The sunlight breaking thro' the shade,
The squirrel chattering overhead,
The timid rabbits lighter tread
Among the rustling leaves.- Dora Read Goodale, Asters, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 45.
- The aster greets us as we pass
With her faint smile.- Sarah Helen Whitman, A Day of the Indian Summer, line 35, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 45.
- And in the woods a fragrance rare
Of wild azaleas fills the air,
And richly tangled overhead
We see their blossoms sweet and red.- Dora Read Goodale, Spring Scatters Far and Wide, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 53.
- The fair azalea bows
Beneath its snowy crest.- Sarah H. Whitman, She Blooms no More, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 53.
- Hang-head Bluebell,
Bending like Moses' sister over Moses,
Full of a secret that thou dar'st not tell!- George MacDonald, Wild Flowers, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 73.
- Oh! roses and lilies are fair to see;
But the wild bluebell is the flower for me.- Louisa A. Meredith, The Bluebell, line 178, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 73.
See Buttercups.
- Whence is yonder flower so strangely bright?
Would the sunset's last reflected shine
Flame so red from that dead flush of light?
Dark with passion is its lifted line,
Hot, alive, amid the falling night.- Dora Read Goodale, Cardinal Flower, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 89.
- While cassias blossom in the zone of calms.
- Jean Ingelow, Sand Martins, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 91.
- For though the camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows.
- William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I (c. 1597), Act II, scene 4, line 441, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 89.
- Eyes of some men travel far
For the finding of a star;
Up and down the heavens they go,
Men that keep a mighty rout!
I'm as great as they, I trow,
Since the day I found thee out,
Little Flower!—I'll make a stir,
Like a sage astronomer.- William Wordsworth, To the Small Celandine; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 91.
- Long as there's a sun that sets,
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are violets,
They will have a place in story:
There's a flower that shall be mine,
'Tis the little Celandine.- William Wordsworth, To the Small Celandine; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 91-92.
- Pleasures newly found are sweet
When they lie about our feet:
February last, my heart
First at sight of thee was glad;
All unheard of as thou art,
Thou must needs, I think have had,
Celandine! and long ago,
Praise of which I nothing know.- William Wordsworth, To the Same Flower; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 92.
- The maid of India, blessed again to hold
In her full lap the Champac's leaves of gold.- Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), "The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan"; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 92.
Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy
Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise.
- Fair gift of Friendship! and her ever bright
And faultless image! welcome now them art,
In thy pure loveliness—thy robes of white,
Speaking a moral to the feeling heart;
Unscattered by heats—by wintry blasts unmoved—
Thy strength thus tested—and thy charms improved.- Anna Peyre Dinnies, To a White Chrysanthemum, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 117.
- Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy
Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise.- Oscar Wilde, Humanitad, Stanza 11, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 117.
- Flocks thick-nibbling through the clovered vale.
- James Thomson, The Seasons, Summer (1727), line 1,235.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 122.
- Where the wind-rows are spread for the butterfly's bed,
And the clover-bloom falleth around.- Eliza Cook, Journal, Volume VII, Stanza 2, Song of the Haymakers.
- Crimson clover I discover
By the garden gate,
And the bees about her hover,
But the robins wait.
Sing, robins, sing,
Sing a roundelay,—
'Tis the latest flower of Spring
Coming with the May!- Dora Read Goodale, Red Clover.
- The clover blossoms kiss her feet,
She is so sweet, she is so sweet.
While I, who may not kiss her hand,
Bless all the wild flowers in the land.- Oscar Leighton, Clover Blossoms, For Thee Alone.
- What airs outblown from ferny dells
And clover-bloom and sweet brier smells.- John Greenleaf Whittier, Last Walk in Autumn, Stanza 6.
O columbine, open your folded wrapper,
Where two twin turtle-doves dwell!
O cuckoopint, toll me the purple clapper
That hangs in your clear green bell!
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 124.
- Or columbines, in purple dressed
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.- William Cullen Bryant, To the Fringed Gentian.
- Skirting the rocks at the forest edge
With a running flame from ledge to ledge,
Or swaying deeper in shadowy glooms,
A smoldering fire in her dusky blooms;
Bronzed and molded by wind and sun,
Maddening, gladdening every one
With a gypsy beauty full and fine,—
A health to the crimson columbine!- Elaine Goodale, Columbine.
- O columbine, open your folded wrapper,
Where two twin turtle-doves dwell!
O cuckoopint, toll me the purple clapper
That hangs in your clear green bell!- Jean Ingelow, Songs of Seven, Seven Times One.
- There's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue for you.
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act IV, scene 5, line 180.
- I am that flower,—That mint.—That columbine.
- William Shakespeare, Love's Labor Lost, Act V, scene 2, line 661.
- Look at this vigorous plant that lifts its head from the meadow,
See how its leaves are turned to the north, as true as the magnet;
This is the compass-flower, that the finger of God has planted
Here in the houseless wild, to direct the traveller's journey.
Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless waste of the desert,
Such in the soul of man is faith.- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847), Part II, Stanza 4, line 140.
And wild-scatter'd cowslips bedeck the green dale.
- Smiled like yon knot of cowslips on a cliff.
- Robert Blair, The Grave (1743), line 520.
- Thus I set my printless feet
O'er the cowslip's velvet head,
That bends not as I tread.- John Milton, Comus (1637), Song.
- The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth
The freckled cowslip, burnet and green clover.- William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), ActV, scene 2, line 48.
- The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see:
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours.- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act II, scene I, line 10.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 146.
- Yet soon fair Spring shall give another scene.
And yellow cowslips gild the level green.- Anne E. Bleecker, Return to Tomhanick.
- And wild-scatter'd cowslips bedeck the green dale.
- Robert Burns, The Chevalier's Lament.
- Ilk cowslip cup shall kep a tear.
- Robert Burns, Elegy on Capt. Matthew Henderson.
- The nesh yonge coweslip bendethe wyth the dewe.
- Thomas Chatterton, Rowley Poems, Mtta.
- The cowslip is a country wench.
- Thomas Hood, Flowers.
- The first wan cowslip, wet
With tears of the first morn.- Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Ode to a Starling.
- Through tall cowslips nodding near you,
Just to touch you as you pass.- Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Song.
- And ye talk together still,
In the language wherewith Spring
Letters cowslips on the hill.- Alfred Tennyson, Adeline, Stanza 5.
- And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo-flowers.
- Alfred Tennyson, The May Queen, Stanza 8.
- Welcome, wild harbinger of spring!
To this small nook of earth;
Feeling and fancy fondly cling
Round thoughts which owe their birth
To thee, and to the humble spot
Where chance has fixed thy lowly lot.- Bernard Barton, To a Crocus, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 152.
- Hail to the King of Bethlehem,
Who weareth in his diadem
The yellow crocus for the gem
Of his authority!- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christus, Part II, The Golden Legend (1872), IX.
See Daisies.
See Daffodils.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 158.
- You cannot forget if you would those golden kisses all over the cheeks of the meadow, queerly called dandelions.
- Henry Ward Beecher, Star Papers, A Discourse of Flowers.
- Upon a showery night and still,
Without a sound of warning,
A trooper band surprised the hill,
And held it in the morning.
We were not waked by bugle notes,
No cheer our dreams invaded,
And yet at dawn, their yellow coats
On the green slopes paraded.- Helen Gray Cone, The Dandelions.
- Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth's ample round
May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.- James Russell Lowell, To the Dandelion.
- Young Dandelion
On a hedge-side,
Said young Dandelion,
Who'll be my bride?
Said young Dandelion
With a sweet air,
I have my eye on
Miss Daisy fair.- Dinah Craik, Young Dandelion.
The blue and bright-eyed floweret of the brook,
Hope's gentle gem, the sweet Forget-me-not.
- Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels. - The blue and bright-eyed floweret of the brook,
Hope's gentle gem, the sweet Forget-me-not.- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Keepsake, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 288.
- The sweet forget-me-nots,
That grow for happy lovers.- Alfred Tennyson, The Brook, line 172, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 288.
Blue thou art, intensely blue;
Flower, whence came thy dazzling hue?
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 310.
- And the blue gentian-flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.- William Cullen Bryant, November.
- Thou blossom! bright with autumn dew,
And colour'd with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.- William Cullen Bryant, To the Fringed Gentian.
- Blue thou art, intensely blue;
Flower, whence came thy dazzling hue?- James Montgomery, The Gentianella.
- Beside the brook and on the umbered meadow,
Where yellow fern-tufts fleck the faded ground,
With folded lids beneath their palmy shadow
The gentian nods in dewy slumbers bound.- Sarah Helen Whitman, A Still Day in Autumn, Stanza 6.
See Goldenrod.
Mountain gorses, ever-golden.
Cankered not the whole year long!
Do ye teach us to be strong,
Howsoever pricked and holden
Like your thorny blooms and so
Trodden on by rain and snow,
Up the hillside of this life, as bleak as where ye grow?
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 329.
- Mountain gorses, do ye teach us
* * * * *
That the wisest word man reaches
Is the humblest he can speak?- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lessons from the Gorse.
- Mountain gorses, ever-golden.
Cankered not the whole year long!
Do ye teach us to be strong,
Howsoever pricked and holden
Like your thorny blooms and so
Trodden on by rain and snow,
Up the hillside of this life, as bleak as where ye grow?- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lessons from the Gorse.
- Love you not, then, to list and hear
The crackling of the gorse-flower near,
Pouring an orange-scented tide
Of fragrance o'er the desert wide?- William Howitt, A June Day.
High in the clefts of the rock 'mid the cedars
Hangeth the harebell the waterfall nigh;
Blue are its petals, deep-blue tinged with purple,
Mystical tintings that mirror the sky.
- Hope is like a harebell, trembling from its birth,
Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth,
Faith is like a lily, lifted high and white,
Love is like a lovely rose, the world's delight.
Harebells and sweet lilies show a thornless growth,
But the rose with all its thorns excels them both.- Christina Rossetti, Hope is like a Harebell; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
- With fairest flowers,
Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shall not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The azur'd harebell, like thy veins.- William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (c. 1611), Act IV, scene ii.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
[edit]
Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 353.
- I love the fair lilies and roses so gay,
They are rich in their pride and their splendor;
But still more do I love to wander away
To the meadow so sweet,
Where down at my feet,
The harebell blooms modest and tender.- Dora Read Goodale, Queen Harebell.
- With drooping bells of clearest blue
Thou didst attract my childish view,
Almost resembling
The azure butterflies that flew
Where on the heath thy blossoms grew
So lightly trembling.- Reginald Heber, The Harebell.
- Simplest of blossoms! To mine eye
Thou bring'st the summer's painted sky;
The May-thorn greening in the nook;
The minnows sporting in the brook;
The bleat of flocks; the breath of flowers;
The song of birds amid the bowers;
The crystal of the azure seas;
The music of the southern breeze;
And, over all, the blessed sun,
Telling of halcyon days begun.- Moir, The Harebell.
- High in the clefts of the rock 'mid the cedars
Hangeth the harebell the waterfall nigh;
Blue are its petals, deep-blue tinged with purple,
Mystical tintings that mirror the sky.- L. D. Pychowska, Harebells.
- I drink deep draughts of its nectar.
- E. C. Stedman, Heliotrope, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 362.
- O sweetest of all the flowrets
That bloom where angels tread!
But never such marvelous odor,
From heliotrope was shed.- E. C. Stedman, Heliotrope, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 362.
- All the woodland path is broken
By warm tints along the way,
And the low and sunny slope
Is alive with sudden hope
When there comes the silent token
Of an April day,—
Blue hepatica!- Dora Read Goodale, Hepatica, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 365.
See Honeysuckle.
Here hyacinths of heavenly blue
Shook their rich tresses to the morn.
If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.
- It is the Hyacinth, whose sweet bells stooping,
Bend with the odours heavy in their cells;
Amid the shadows of their fragrant drooping,
Memory, that is itself a shadow, dwells.- Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Flowers of Loveliness, 1838 (1837), 'The Hyacinth'
- The bees came booming as if they had never gone,
As if hyacinths had never gone. We say
This changes and that changes. Thus the constant
Violets, doves, girls, bees and hyacinths
Are inconstant objects of inconstant cause
In a universe of inconstancy. This means
Night-blue is an inconstant thing. The seraph
Is satyr in Saturn, according to his thoughts.- Wallace Stevens, It Must Change, Part I.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 382-83.
- The hyacinth for constancy wi' its unchanging blue.
- Robert Burns, O Luve Will Venture In.
- Art thou a hyacinth blossom
The shepherds upon the hills
Have trodden into the ground?
Shall I not lift thee?- Bliss Carman, Translation of Sappho'.
- Come, evening gale! the crimsonne rose
Is drooping for thy sighe of dewe;
The hyacinthe wooes thy kisse to close
In slumberre sweete its eye of blue.- George Croly, Inscription for a Grotto.
- By field and by fell, and by mountain gorge,
Shone Hyacinths blue and clear.- Lucy Hooper, Legends of Flowers, Stanza 3.
- Here hyacinths of heavenly blue
Shook their rich tresses to the morn.- James Montgomery, The Adventure of a Star.
- If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.- Mosleh Eddin Saadi, Gulistan (Garden of Roses). Compare: "If thou of fortune be bereft, / And thou dost find but two loaves left / To thee --- sell one and with the dole / Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul"; James Terry White, Not by Bread Alone, Stanza 1, published in The Century Magazine (August 1907), p. 519.
- And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense.- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Sensitive Plant, Part I.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 391.
- Pale, mournful flower, that hidest in shade
Mid dewy damps and murky glade,
With moss and mould,
Why dost thou hang thy ghastly head,
So sad and cold?- Catherine E. Beecher, To the Monotropa, or Ghost Flower.
- Where the long, slant rays are beaming,
Where the shadows cool lie dreaming,
Pale the Indian pipes are gleaming—
Laugh, O murmuring Spring!- Sarah F. Davis, Summer Song.
- I hear, I hear
The twang of harps, the leap
Of fairy feet and know the revel's ripe,
While like a coral stripe
The lizard cool doth creep,
Monster, but monarch there, up the pale Indian Pipe.- Charles De Kay, Arcana Sylvarum.
- Death in the wood,—
In the death-pale lips apart;
Death in a whiteness that curdled the blood,
Now black to the very heart:
The wonder by her was formed
Who stands supreme in power;
To show that life by the spirit comes
She gave us a soulless flower!- Elaine Goodale, Indian Pipe, Stanza 4.
- The yellow flags * * * would stand
Up to their chins in water.- Jean Ingelow, Song of the Night Watches, Watch I, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 275.
- Born in the purple, born to joy and pleasance,
Thou dost not toil nor spin,
But makest glad and radiant with thy presence
The meadow and the lin.- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Flower-de-Luce, Stanza 3; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 282.
- O flower-de-luce, bloom on, and let the river
Linger to kiss thy feet!
O flower of song, bloom on, and make forever
The world more fair and sweet.- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Flower-de-Luce, Stanza 8; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 282.
- Lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one!- William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act IV, scene 4, line 126.
- And nearer to the river's trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple, prankt with white;
And starry river buds among the sedge;
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright.- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Question, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 275.
- What, is the jay more precious than the lark,
Because his feathers are more beautiful?- William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1593-94), Act IV, scene 3, line 177.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 403.
- And at my silent window-sill
The jessamine peeps in.- William Cullen Bryant, The Hunter's Serenade.
- Jasmine is sweet, and has many loves.
- Thomas Hood, Flowers.
- Jas in the Arab language is despair,
And Min the darkest meaning of a lie.
Thus cried the Jessamine among the flowers,
How justly doth a lie
Draw on its head despair!
Among the fragrant spirits of the bowers
The boldest and the strongest still was I.
Although so fair,
Therefore from Heaven
A stronger perfume unto me was given
Than any blossom of the summer hours.- Charles Godfrey Leland, Jessamine.
- Among the flowers no perfume is like mine;
That which is best in me comes from within.
So those in this world who would rise and shine
Should seek internal excellence to win.
And though 'tis true that falsehood and despair
Meet in my name, yet bear it still in mind
That where they meet they perish. All is fair
When they are gone and nought remains behind.- Charles Godfrey Leland, Jessamine.
- And the jasmine flower in her fair young breast,
(O the faint, sweet smell of that jasmine flower!)
And the one bird singing alone to his nest.
And the one star over the tower.- Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Aux Italiens, Stanza 13.
- It smelt so faint, and it smelt so sweet,
It made me creep and it made me cold.
Like the scent that steals from the crumbling sheet
Where a mummy is half unroll'd.- Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Aux Italiens.
- Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns
Its fragrant lamps, and turns
Into a royal court with green festoons
The banks of dark lagoons.- Henry Timrod, Spring.
The purple clusters load the lilac-bushes.
- …The thornless lilacs summon up no dread,
Demand no witness. Flower, branch, and leaf
Are only what they are. They have no words
For us to ponder, though we sometimes feign
To speak for them, as augury of birds
Construes an omen of impending pain.- Joseph S. Salemi, "The Lilacs on Good Friday", The Society of Classical Poets (March 29, 2024)
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 457.
- The lilac spread
Odorous essence.- Jean Ingelow, Laurance, Part III.
- Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;
Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London).
And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland;
Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London).- Alfred Noyes, The Barrel Organ.
- I am thinking of the lilac-trees,
That shook their purple plumes,
And when the sash was open,
Shed fragrance through the room.- Mrs. Anna S. Stephens, The Old Apple-Tree.
- The purple clusters load the lilac-bushes.
- Amelia B. Welby, Hopeless Love.
- When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.- Walt Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd, I, Leaves of Grass.
- With every leaf a miracle … and from this bush in the door-yard,
With delicate-colour'd blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green
A sprig, with its flower, I break.- Walt Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd, III, Leaves of Grass.
See Lilies.
Lily-of-the-Valley (Convallaria Majalis)
[edit]
See Lily-of-the-Valley.
Lotus (Zizyphus Lotus, Nelumbo Nucifera)
[edit]
This flower that first appeared as summer's guest
Preserves her beauty 'mid autumnal leaves
And to her mournful habits fondly cleaves.
- Love lies bleeding in the bed whereover
Roses lean with smiling mouths or pleading:
Earth lies laughing where the sun's dart clove her:
Love lies bleeding.- Charles Algernon Swinburne, Love Lies Bleeding, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 484.
- This flower that first appeared as summer's guest
Preserves her beauty 'mid autumnal leaves
And to her mournful habits fondly cleaves.- William Wordsworth, Love Lies Bleeding, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 484.
Majestic flower! How purely beautiful
Thou art…
- Fragrant o'er all the western groves
The tall magnolia towers unshaded.- Maria Gowen Brooks, stanzas written by Idomen on seeing Pharamond in Idomen; or, The Vale of Yumuri (New York: Samuel Colman, 1843), "The Confessions", p. 182.
- Majestic flower! How purely beautiful
Thou art, as rising from thy bower of green,
Those dark and glossy leaves so thick and full,
Thou standest like a high-born forest queen
Among thy maidens clustering round so fair;—
I love to watch thy sculptured form unfolding,
And look into thy depths, to image there
A fairy cavern; and while thus beholding,
And while the breeze floats o'er thee, matchless flower,
I breathe the perfume, delicate and strong,
That comes like incense from thy petal-bower,
My fancy roams those southern woods along,
Beneath that glorious tree, where deep among
The unsunned leaves thy large white flower-cups hung!- Christopher Pearse Cranch, Sonnet VII: "To the Magnolia Grandiflora" (1836), in Poems (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1844), p. 102.
- I wake to "magnolias sweet and fresh",
Lines of poetry on my breath,
You were here but you have stolen away.
My inspiration is an evening star,
So come to me wherever you are,
I will wait for you tonight alone in the dark…- Greta Gaines, in "Firefly" on Greta Gaines (1999); the phrase in quotes is one earlier found in "Strange Fruit" (1937) by Abel Meeropol, famously sung by Billie Holiday.
- Lush orbs of rose and cream
Unfurl like lotus blooms,
Luxuriant, and stream
Soft, sensuous perfumes.- Adam Sedia, "Magnolia", The Society of Classical Poets (April 16, 2025)
The marigold abroad her leaves doth spread,
Because the sun's and her power is the same.
Open afresh your round of starry folds,
Ye ardent marigolds!
Dry up the moisture from your golden lips.
- And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes.- William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act II, scene 3. Song, line 25.
- Here's flowers for you:
Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram:
The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun,
And with him rises weeping.- William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act IV, scene 4, line 103.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 494-495.
- The marigold, whose courtier's face
Echoes the sun, and doth unlace
Her at his rise, at his full stop
Packs and shuts up her gaudy shop.- John Cleveland, On Phillis Walking Before Sunrise.
- The marigold abroad her leaves doth spread,
Because the sun's and her power is the same.- Henry Constable, Diana.
- No marigolds yet closed are,
No shadows great appeare.- Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648), "To Daisies, Not to Shut so Soone".
- Open afresh your round of starry folds,
Ye ardent marigolds!
Dry up the moisture from your golden lips.- John Keats, I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill.
- The sun-observing marigold.
- Francis Quarles, The School of the Heart, Ode XXX, Stanza 5.
- Nor shall the marigold unmentioned die,
Which Acis once found out in Sicily;
She Phoebus loves, and from him draws his hue,
And ever keeps his golden beams in view.- René Rapin, in his Latin Poem on Gardens, translated by Gardiner in 1706.
- When with a serious musing I behold
The graceful and obsequious marigold,
How duly every morning she displays
Her open breast, when Titan spreads his rays.- George Wither, The Marigold.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 495.
- The seal and guerdon of wealth untold
We clasp in the wild marsh marigold.- Elaine Goodale, Nature's Coinage.
- Fair is the marigold, for pottage meet.
- John Gay, Shepherd's Week, Monday, line 46.
- A little marsh-plant, yellow green,
And prick'd at lip with tender red,
Tread close, and either way you tread,
Some faint black water jets between
Lest you should bruise the curious head.- Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Sundew.
- With careless joy we thread the woodland ways
And reach her broad domain.
Thro' sense of strength and beauty, free as air.
We feel our savage kin,
And thus alone with conscious meaning wear
The Indian's moccasin!- Elaine Goodale, Moccasin Flower, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 519.
- Not to the sunny hours
That waken other flowers,
Dost thou fling forth the odour of thy sighing
But in the time of gloom,
Is yielded thy perfume,
Like Love, that lives when all beside is dying.- Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Flowers of Loveliness, 1838 (1837), 'The Night-Blowing Convolvulus'
- Wondrous interlacement!
Holding fast to threads by green and silky rings,
With the dawn it spreads its white and purple wings;
Generous in its bloom, and sheltering while it clings,
Sturdy morning-glory.- Helen Hunt Jackson, Morning-Glory; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 530.
- The morning-glory's blossoming
Will soon be coming round
We see their rows of heart-shaped leaves
Upspringing from the ground.- Maria White Lowell, Morning-Glory; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 530.
- Nor myrtle—which means chiefly love: and love
Is something awful which one dare not touch
So early o' mornings.- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856), Book II.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 541.
- The myrtle (ensign of supreme command,
Consigned by Venus to Melissa's hand)
Not less capricious than a reigning fair,
Oft favors, oft rejects a lover's prayer;
In myrtle shades oft sings the happy swain,
In myrtle shades despairing ghosts complain.- Samuel Johnson, Written at the Request of a Gentleman, line 3.
- Dark-green and gemm'd with flowers of snow,
With close uncrowded branches spread
Not proudly high, nor meanly low,
A graceful myrtle rear'd its head.- James Montgomery, The Myrtle.
- While the myrtle, now idly entwin'd with his crown,
Like the wreath of Harmodius, shall cover his sword.- Thomas Moore, O, Blame Not The Bard.
See Daffodils.
In the marsh pink orchid's faces,
With their coy and dainty graces,
Lure us to their hiding places ,
Laugh, O murmuring Spring!
- In the marsh pink orchid's faces,
With their coy and dainty graces,
Lure us to their hiding places ,
Laugh, O murmuring Spring!- Sarah F. Davis, Summer Song, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 574.
- Around the pillars of the palm-tree bower
The orchids cling, in rose and purple spheres;
Shield-broad the lily floats; the aloe flower
Foredates its hundred years.- Bayard Taylor, Canopus, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 574.
See Pansies.
Art thou a type of beauty, or of power,
Of sweet enjoyment, or disastrous sin?
For each thy name denoteth, Passion flower!
- Art thou a type of beauty, or of power,
Of sweet enjoyment, or disastrous sin?
For each thy name denoteth, Passion flower!
O no! thy pure corolla's depth within
We trace a holier symbol; yea, a sign
'Twixt God and man; a record of that hour
When the expiatory act divine
Cancelled that curse which was our mortal dower.
It is the Cross!- Sir Aubrey De Vere, A Song of Faith, Devout Exercises and Sonnets, "The Passion Flower"; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 581.
- Her heart was a passion-flower, bearing within it the crown of thorns and the cross of Christ.
- Jeremy Taylor, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 397.
- You take a pink,
You dig about its roots and water it,
And so improve it to a garden-pink,
But will not change it to a heliotrope.- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856), Book VI.
- And I will pu' the pink, the emblem o' my dear,
For she's the pink o' womankind, and blooms without a peer.- Robert Burns, O Luve Will Venture In; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 597.
- The beauteous pink I would not slight.
Pride of the gardener's leisure.- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Floweret Wondrous Fair, Stanza 8. John S. Dwight's translation; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 597.
See Poppies.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 633.
- Ring-ting! I wish I were a primrose,
A bright yellow primrose blowing in the spring!
The stooping boughs above me,
The wandering bee to love me,
The fern and moss to creep across,
And the elm-tree for our king!- William Allingham, Wishing, A Child's Song.
- The primrose banks how fair!
- Robert Burns, My Chloris, Mark How Green the Groves.
- "I could have brought you some primroses, but I do not like to mix violets with anything."
"They say primroses make a capital salad," said Lord St. Jerome.- Benjamin Disraeli, Lothair, Chapter XIII.
- Her modest looks the cottage might adorn,
Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn.- Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770), line 329.
- Why doe ye weep, sweet babes? Can tears
Speak griefe in you,
Who were but borne
Just as the modest morne
Teemed her refreshing dew?- Robert Herrick, To Primroses.
- A tuft of evening primroses,
O'er which the mind may hover till it dozes;
O'er which it well might take a pleasant sleep,
But that 'tis ever startled by the leap
Of buds into ripe flowers.- John Keats, I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill.
- Bountiful Primroses,
With outspread heart that needs the rough leaves' care.- George MacDonald, Wild Flowers.
- Mild offspring of a dark and sullen sire!
Whose modest form, so delicately fine,
Was nursed in whirling storms,
And cradled in the winds.
Thee when young spring first question'd winter's sway,
And dared the sturdy blusterer to the fight,
Thee on his bank he threw
To mark his victory.- Henry Kirke White, To an Early Primrose.
- A primrose by a river's brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.- William Wordsworth, Peter Bell, Part I, Stanza 12.
- Primroses, the Spring may love them;
Summer knows but little of them.- William Wordsworth, Foresight.
- The Primrose for a veil had spread
The largest of her upright leaves;
And thus for purposes benign,
A simple flower deceives.- William Wordsworth, A Wren's Nest.
- And the saffron flower
Clear as a flame of sacrifice breaks out.- Jean Ingelow, The Doom, Book II, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 690.
- From the white-blossomed sloe, my dear Chloe requested,
A sprig her fair breast to adorn.
No! by Heav'n, I exclaim'd, may I perish,
If ever I plant in that bosom a thorn.- John O'Keefe, The Thorn, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 721.
- Thou beautiful new comer,
With white and maiden brow ;
Thou fairy gift from summer,
Why art thou blooming now ?
This dim and sheltered alley
Is dark with winter green ;
Not such as in the valley
At sweet spring-time is seen.- Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1836 (1835), 'The Snowdrop'
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 723.
- At the head of Flora's dance;
Simple Snow-drop, then in thee
All thy sister-train I see;
Every brilliant bud that blows,
From the blue-bell to the rose;
All the beauties that appear,
On the bosom of the Year,
All that wreathe the locks of Spring,
Summer's ardent breath perfume,
Or on the lap of Autumn bloom,
All to thee their tribute bring.- James Montgomery, Snow-Drop.
- The morning star of flowers.
- James Montgomery, Snow-Drop.
- Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,
Chaste Snow-drop, venturous harbinger of Spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years!- William Wordsworth, To a Snow-Drop.
- Lone Flower, hemmed in with snows and white as they
But hardier far, once more I see thee bend
Thy forehead, as if fearful to offend,
Like an unbidden guest. Though day by day,
Storms, sallying from the mountain tops, waylay
The rising sun, and on the plains descend;
Yet art thou welcome, welcome as a friend
Whose zeal outruns his promise!- William Wordsworth, To a Snow-Drop.
See Sunflowers.
- The pea is but a wanton witch
In too much haste to wed,
And clasps her rings on every hand.- Thomas Hood, Flowers; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 591.
- Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight;
With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.- John Keats, I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 591.
- Up climb’d the sweet pea,
The butterfly of flowers:—I love it not,
Though every hue—and it has many tints—
Are dyed as if the sunset evening clouds
Had fallen to the earth in sudden rain,
And left their colours : purple, delicate pink,
And snowy white, are on thy wing-like leaves;
But thou art all too forward in thy bloom ;
Thy blossoms are the sun’s, and cling to all
That can support them into open day:
And then they die, leaving no root behind,
The hope and promise of another spring;
And no perfume, whose lingering gratitude
Remains round what upheld its summer’s life.- Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Heath's Book of Beauty, 1833 (1832), 'The Last of St. Aubyns'
- Up wi' the flowers o' Scotland,
The emblems o' the free,
Their guardians for a thousand years,
Their guardians still we'll be.
A foe had better brave the de'il
Within his reeky cell,
Than our thistle's purple bonnet,
Or bonny heather bell.- Thomas Hood, The Flowers of Scotland; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 787.
- When on the breath of Autumn's breeze,
From pastures dry and brown,
Goes floating, like an idle thought,
The fair, white thistle-down;
O, then what joy to walk at will,
Upon the golden harvest-hill!- Mary Howitt, Corn-Fields; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 787.
- The tuberose, with her silvery light,
That in the gardens of Malay
Is call'd the Mistress of the Night,
So like a bride, scented and bright;
She comes out when the sun's away.- Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), Light of the Harem, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 822.
See Tulips.
- Violets! — deep-blue violets!
April's loveliest coronets!
There are no flowers grow in the vale,
Kiss'd by the dew, wooed by the gale, —
None by the dew of the twilight wet,
So sweet as the deep-blue violet!- Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Improvisatrice (1824), 'The Violet'
- Though many a flower may win my praise,
The violet has my love;
I did not pass my childish days
In garden or in grove:
My garden was the window-seat,
Upon whose edge was set
A little vase—the fair, the sweet—
It was the violet.- Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Literary Souvenir, 1831 (1830), 'The Violet', also published in The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
The slender water-lily
Peeps dreamingly out of the lake;
The moon, oppress'd with love's sorrow,
Looks tenderly down for her sake.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake.
- Summer night,
blossoming in the pond,
water-lilies and stars- Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Morning at Mount Ring (2007).
- Those virgin lilies, all the night
Bathing their beauties in the lake,
That they may rise more fresh and bright,
When their beloved sun's awake.- Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), Paradise and the Peri.
- The water-lily starts and slides
Upon the level in little puffs of wind,
Tho' anchor'd to the bottom.- Alfred Tennyson, The Princess (1847), IV, line 236.
- Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake;
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom, and be lost in me.- Alfred Tennyson, The Princess (1847), VII, line 171.
- Rapaciously we gathered flowery spoils
From land and water; lilies of each hue, ,
Golden and white, that float upon the waves,
And court the wind.- William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814), Book IX, line 540.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
[edit]
Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 863.
- What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes :
Can the wild water-lily restore.- Thomas Campbell, Field Flowers.
- The slender water-lily
Peeps dreamingly out of the lake;
The moon, oppress'd with love's sorrow,
Looks tenderly down for her sake.- Heinrich Heine, Book of Songs, New Spring, No. 15, Stanza 1.
- Broad water-lilies lay tremulously.
And starry river-buds glimmered by,
And around them the soft stream did glide and dance
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Sensitive Plant, Part I.
- Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying,
In sweetness, not in music, dying.- John Greenleaf Whittier, The Maids of Attitash.