THE CROCUS-PRIOR.

Dainty young thing

Of life!-thou venturous flower

Who growest through the hard cold bower
Of wintry spring.

Thou various hued,

Soft, voiceless bell, whose spire

Rocks in the grassy leaves like wire

In solitude.

Like patience, thou
Art quiet in thy earth,

Instructing Hope that virtue's birth

Is feeling's vow.

Thy fancied bride,

The delicate Snowdrop, keeps

Her home with thee; she wakes and sleeps

Near thy true side.

Will man but hear!

A simple flower can tell

What beauties in his mind should dwell

Through passion's sphere.

The brilliant colours and woody growth of the PYRUS JAPONICA, make it contrast strikingly with the pale and fragile snowdrop, near whose modest bells this superb native of Japan may often be seen, exhibiting the singular appearance I have described in the illustrative lines. The buds and flowers of brightest crimson, with their golden-coloured anthers, come peering out through the snow wreaths, that lie lightly upon their trained stems; and, to a far less fanciful eye than mine, might well

seem to have melted their way, dissolving their glittering veil to come blushing again into sunshine. The white and pink varieties of the Pyrus Japonica are also very beautiful, but have not the rich and glowing splendour of my fairy favourite, which, through the months of late Autumn, Winter, and early Spring, when so few of our garden darlings venture to look upon the dreary earth, clothes the supporting wall or trellis with its cheering and vivid beauty, being, in this respect, more worthy our esteem than most of our foreign acquisitions, which generally require the additional warmth and shelter of the stove or conservatory.

The next gem of my floral chaplet is one of classic fame; one of the many fair flowers around which mythological fable has thrown its quaint legendary garb: even its botanical name brings a dream of romance with it-Narcissus Poeticus. Our own merry, dancing daffodil claims kindred with the Narcissi; and who does not love the daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty?

What a mine of wealth a bank sprinkled thickly with their bright golden crests and waving leaves seemed to us in childhood! And, if only precious as the memories of such innocent delight, we must love them still. Of modern Bards, however great, I have forbidden myself to speak, but what can be more beautiful, in thought, expression, and melody, than these sweet verses of Robert Herrick's?

The Narcissus is celebrated by many of our old Poets, to whom the story of the beautiful youth growing enamoured of his own reflected form as he gazed into a fountain, and pining in hopeless love till transformed into the Flower bearing his name, was a most tempting subject for their quaint and fanciful muses. The bending heads of all the Narcissi favour the fable, which is certainly a very graceful one; and we do well to bear such in our memory, for they greatly enchance and refine the enjoyment we receive from Flowers, in thus making mental tablets of their delicate and pencilled leaves. The Narcissus is one of the flowers spoken of by Emilia and her maid, in the beautiful garden scene in "The Two Noble Kinsmen," by Beaumont and Fletcher.

Emilia.

This garden bath a world of pleasures in't.
What flower is this?

Servant. 'Tis called Narcissus, Madam.

Emilia. That was a fair boy certain, but a fool

To love himself; were there not maids enough?
Or were they all hard-hearted?

Servant. They could not be, to one so fair.

Canst thou not work such flowers in silk, wench?

I'll have a gown full of 'em; and of these,

This a pretty colour: will't not do

Rarely upon a skirt, wench?

Servant. Dainty, Madam.

The most deeply and entirely poetical allusion to the fate. of Narcissus is the following splendid passage by Ben Jonson. The love of Echo, and her half reproachful grief, give a real and touching pathos to what in other hands is a mere fable.

Echo.

His name revives and lifts me up from earth-
See, see, the mourning fount, whose springs weep yet
Th' untimely fate of that too beauteous boy,
That trophy of self-love, and spoil of nature,
Who, now transformed into this drooping flower,
Hangs the repentant head back from the stream;
As if it wished-" would I had never looked
Into such a flattering mirror!" O Narcissus!
Thou that wast once (and yet art) my Narcissus,
Had Echo but been private with thy thoughts,
She would have dropped away herself in tears,
Till she had all turned water, that in her
(As in a truer glass) thou might'st have gazed,
And seen thy beauties by more kind reflection.
But self-love never yet could look on truth
But with bleared beams; slick Flattery and she

Are twin-born sisters, and do mix their eyes,
As, if you sever one, the other dies.

Why did the Gods give thee a heavenly form
And earthly thoughts to make thee proud of it?
Why, do I ask?-'Tis now the known disease
That Beauty hath, to bear too deep a sense

Of her own self-conceived excellence.

Oh! hadst thou known the worth of Heaven's rich gift,
Thou wouldst have turned it to a truer use,
And not (with starved and covetous ignorance)
Pined in continual eyeing that bright gem,
The glance whereof to others had been more,

Than to thy famished mind the wide world's store.

Shelley, in the exquisite description of flowers in his Poem of the "Sensitive Plant," calls

Narcissi, the fairest among them all,

Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness.

The scent of the Narcissus, too, is extremely fragrant, and when adorning our windows in wintry weather, how delightfully does the perfumed air of the snug, fire-enlivened study seem to whisper, or at least breathe, of Summer's sweet children and merry blue sky! Yes, the Narcissus is sweet, but it yields the palm of fragrance to its modest neighbour in the wreath. Who does not know that

VIOLETS, dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,

Or Cytherea's breath,

have their humble dwelling-places in our English lanes?

Who has not seen them on many a sunny bank, in early