(Your purity equals your loveliness.)

RANGE-BLOSSOM is generally deemed typical of chastity. The practice of brides wearing a wreath of it on their wedding-day, though still retained in some countries, is not so fashionable here as formerly.

In his "Ode to Memory," Tennyson alludes to the custom of using these blossoms at nuptials thus:

THE ORANGE-BLOSSOM.

JUST then, beneath some orange-trees,
Whose fruit and blossoms in the breeze

Were wantoning together, free,

Like age at play with infancy.

THE ORANGE-TREE.

SPENSER.

NEXT thereunto did grow a goodly tree,

With branches broad dispread and body great, Clothed with leaves, that none the wood might see, And laden all with fruit, as thick as thick might be.

The fruit were golden apples glistering bright,
That goodly was their glory to behold;
On earth no better grew, nor living wight

E'er better saw, but they from hence* were sold,
For those which Hercules, with conquest bold,
Got from great Atlas' daughters, hence began,

And planted there, did bring forth fruit of gold, And those with which th' Euboean young man wan [won] Swift Atalanta, when, through craft, he her outran.

Here also sprang that goodly golden fruit

With which Acontius got his lover true,
Whom he had long time sought with fruitless suit;
Here eke that famous golden apple grew,
The which among the gods false Até threw,

For which the Idæan ladies disagreed,

Till partial Paris deemed it Venus' due,

And had [of her] fair Helen for his meed,

That many noble Greeks and Trojans made to bleed.

* The garden of Proserpina.

TO THE HUMMING BIRD.

CHARLOTTE SMITH.

THERE, lovely bee-bird! mayst thou rove
Through spicy vale and citron grove,
And woo and win thy fluttering love
With plume so bright;

There rapid fly, more heard than seen,
'Mid orange-boughs of polished green,
With glowing fruit, and flowers between
Of purest white.

THE ORANGE-BOUGH.

MRS. HEMANS.

OH! bring me one sweet orange-bough,
To fan my cheek, to cool my brow;
One bough, with pearly blossoms dressed,
And bind it, mother! on my breast!

Go seek the grove along the shore,
Whose odours I must breathe no more,

The grove where every scented tree

Thrills to the deep voice of the sea.

Oh! Love's fond sighs, and fervent prayer,
And wild farewell, are lingering there,
Each leaf's light whisper hath a tone,

My faint heart, even in death, would own.

Then bear me thence one bough, to shed
Life's parting sweetness round my head,
And bind it, mother! on my breast
When I am laid in lonely rest.

ANEMONE.

(Withered Hopes-Forsaken.)

HIS flower derives its name from anemos, the Greek word for wind, from thence came our poetical appellation of "the wind-flower." The ancients tell us that the Anemone was formerly a nymph beloved by Zephyr, and that Flora, jealous of her beauty, banished her from her Court, and finally transformed her into the flower that now bears her name. The more common myth is, that the anemone sprang from the blood of Adonis, combined with the tears which Venus shed over his body. The Greek poet Bion, in his "Lament for Adonis," says:

"That wretched queen, Adonis bewailing,

For every drop of blood lets fall a tear;

Two blooming flowers the mingled streams disclose:
Anemone the tears; the blood, a rose.

TO THE ANEMONE.

MISS PRATT.

FLOWERS of the wild wood! your home is there,

'Mid all that is fragrant, all that is fair;

Where the wood-mouse makes his home in the earth;

Where gnat and butterfly have their birth;

Where leaves are dancing over each flower,
Fanning it well in the noontide hour,

And the breath of the wind is murmuring low,
As branches are bending to and fro.

Sweet are the memories that ye bring
Of the pleasant leafy woods of spring;
Of the wild bee, so gladly humming,
Joyous that earth's young flowers are coming;
Of the nightingale and merry thrush,
Cheerfully singing from every bush;

And the cuckoo's note, when the air is still,
Heard far away on the distant hill.

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Pure are the sights and sounds of the wild
Ye can bring to the heart of Nature's child;
Plain and beautiful is the story

That ye tell of your Maker's glory;

Useful the lesson that ye bear,

That fragile is all, however fair;

While ye teach that time is on his wing,
As ye open the blossoms of every spring.

THE RED ANEMONE.

TENNYSON.

GROWTHS of jasmine turned

Their humid arms, festooning tree and tree,
And at the root through lush green grasses burned
The red anemone.