Читать книгу Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Vol.1&2). Letters & Travel Sketches from Europe онлайн

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Here the wild flowers attracted my attention, as being so different from those of our own country. Their daisy is not our flower, with its wide, plaited ruff and yellow centre. The English daisy is

"The wee modest crimson-tipped flower,"

which Burns celebrates. It is what we raise in greenhouses, and call the mountain daisy. Its effect, growing profusely about fields and grass plats, is very beautiful.

We read much, among the poets, of the primrose,

"Earliest daughter of the Spring."

This flower is one, also, which we cultivate in gardens to some extent. The outline of it is as follows: The hue a delicate straw color; it grows in tufts in shady places, and has a pure, serious look, which reminds one of the line of Shakspeare—

"Pale primroses, which die unmarried."

It has also the faintest and most ethereal perfume,—a perfume that seems to come and go in the air like music; and you perceive it at a little distance from a tuft of them, when you would not if you gathered and smelled them. On the whole, the primrose is a poet's and a painter's flower. An artist's eye would notice an exquisite harmony between the yellow-green hue of its leaves and the tint of its blossoms. I do not wonder that it has been so great a favorite among the poets. It is just such a flower as Mozart and Raphael would have loved.