The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1900-05-27

SWEENEY III sloi IRE OlQ tOWH pun sueu tns
even tenure of the way until its govern
ment was merged into the District OF Co
lumbia, and at last its identity became q
portion of the capital of the United States.
SHAKESPEARE's FLOWER SONGS
CFrom the New York Home Journal)
Every year thousands of English and
Americans go on pilgrimage to a sleepy
little market town among the placid Avon
meadows. They look, curiously at the
house in which Ensland's greatest poet
| was born and stare at his grave in the old
church among the elms. Only & few ever
think of exploring the country whie
| Shakespeare knew SO we'll and observed
SO closely-quiet,.p peaceful, old-world War
wickshire, in which his youth and prime
| were spent.
In order to catch the spirit OF Shakes
| peare's pictures, you must go out into the
woods and meadows through which lie
wandered and gathered the wild flowers
which make his plays fragrant with the
breath from the country. with the fresh
ness of hawthorne buds. violets butter
| cups and daisies. Warwickshire is called
| the heart and garden Of England, and no
other part of that fertile country is so
rich in wild flowers. Though the heart
that loved them so long has been dust
they are made immortal by him; and rot
only do these flowers live and renew their
! being annually in the old familiar haunts
| of the poet. but they bloom perennially
in the rich gardens of his verse.
In numberless passages Shakespeare
| shows his fondness for flowers, especially
for the fragrant blossoms of early spring
that come before the swallow dares."
critic has said that George Eliot when
/ in search OF color turns naturally to gems,
IN IL
| compare the eyes of his sleeping Lucrece
-; to gems that have quenched their radiance,
| but to flowers that have sheathed their
/ light"
April was Shakespeare's own month. in
which he was born and died, and OF which
he speaks SO fondly-"proud-p April
| that puts the spirit of youth in every
| thing; lovely April of her prince"
"wcll-appareled April" glory of an
April day" April when men WOO" 1t
stands in his verse as symbolic of youth
and love- and he writes of the flowers of
spongy April" as If they were his best
beloved
The violet seems to be Shakespeare's
own flower, to which he alludes in no less
than eleven Of his plays. and in several
of his sonnets. April and the violet must
always be associated in our mind with the
immortal bard.
To show his appreciation of the perfec-
ton of this fragrant little bloom, Shak-
speare writes:
To gid refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw perfume the violet.
To smooth the ice or add another hue
Unto the rainbow. or with taper light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous
In one of his sonnets he thus addresses
the violet:
that smells,
II not from my loves breath? The purple pride
Which thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
in my loves veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
And in the Joyous spring song from
Loves Labor's Lost he carols forth:
When daisies pied and violets blue.
And lady-s mocks all silver white
And cuckoo-buds Of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight.
One of the most charming OF Shakes
peare's tributes to the violet is connected
with the fable OF mythology:
Oh, Proserpina.
For the flowers now, that frighed thou let'st fall
From Dis's wagon. . Violets dim
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherta's breath!
That the poet associated music and per-
fume is shown in Twelfth Night" where
the duke says: t-l-
That strain again, IT had dying fall;
Oh, it came Ger my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon bank Of yiolets,
Stealing and giving odu.
Shakespeare, like more ordinary mortals.
is reminded Of the brief spring time OF life
and love and beauty by the very sweet
ness of the thing he loves best:
When I behold the violet past prime,
Then Of thy beauty do question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must CO.
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake |
And die fast As they Others grow
The daffodil-that pre- Raphaelte flower |
has a warm place in the affections OF
Shakespeare. Perdita, the most womanly |
of all Shakespeare's women, salutes it IN
this way:
Dafodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds OF March with beauty.
What could be more bithesome than !
that jocund sixteenth century spring song I
sung by Autolycus in the Winters Tale" |
taking the daffodil for its theme?
When daffodils begin to peer
With heigh! the doxy Ger the dale.
Why, then, in the sweet o the year,
For the red blood reigns in the winters pale.
Perdita also tells us of:
Pale prirnroses
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bold Phoebus in his strength
Phoebus is the sun. To the flowers he
is as bridegroom. They wait his arrival;
their wedding day is when his beams fall |
bright and warm into their tinted cups
The primroses, like young maidens who die
in their teens, they just glance at him,
then fade away, so runs the classic legend.
Ophelia gives us more unpleasant view
of this spring blossom:
Like pulled and reckless lbertne.
Himself the primrose path dallance ,reads
And recks not his own rsde.
Again, in Macbeth" this comparison ia
made:
had thought to have let in some OF all pro-
fessons that go the primrose way to everlasting
fire.
much prettier conceit concerning the
primrose is the German way of calling the
flower "Our Lady's Key" because with
this flower she unlocks the gates OF spring
The anemone is not mentioned by name
in Shakespeare's plays, but it is conceded
that this is the flower meant in Venus
and Adonis":
BY this the boy that by her side lay killed
Was melted like vapor from her sight;
And in his blood that on the ground lay spilled
A purple flower sprang up checkered with white.
well his pale cheeks and the blood
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.
spring flowers in the passages already
ever is given in the description of Lu-:
crece:
Without the bed her other taire hand was
On the green coveret, Whose perfect white
Showed like April daisy on the grass.
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