Of the sunne, for there it will unclose;
Alas, that I ne had English rhyme or prose
Suffisaunt this floure to praise aright."

I could give you several other quotations from Chaucer, but I will
content myself with this, for I think unbounded admiration of a flower
can scarcely go further than the lines I have read to you.

In an early poem published by Ritson is the following--

"Lenten ys come with love to toune
With blosmen ant with briddes roune
That al thys blisse bryngeth;
Dayeseyes in this dales,
Notes suete of nyghtegales
Vch foul song singeth."

_Ancient Songs and Ballads_, vol. i, p. 63.

Stephen Hawes, who lived in the time of Henry VII., wrote a poem called
the "Temple of Glass." In that temple he tells us--

"I saw depycted upon a wall,
From est to west, fol many a fayre image
Of sundry lovers. . . . ."

And among these lovers--

"And Alder next was the freshe quene,
I mean Alceste, the noble true wife,
And for Admete howe she lost her life,
And for her trouthe, if I shall not lye,
How she was turned into a Daysye."

We next come to Spenser. In the "Muiopotmos," he gives a list of flowers
that the butterfly frequents, with most descriptive epithets to each
flower most happily chosen. Among the flowers are--

"The Roses raigning in the pride of May,
Sharp Isope good for greene woundes' remedies,
Faire Marigoldes, and bees-alluring Thyme,
Sweet Marjoram, and Daysies decking prime."

By "decking prime" he means they are the ornament of the morning.[366:1]
Again he introduces the Daisy in a stanza of much beauty, that commences
the June Eclogue of the "Shepherd's Calendar."

"Lo! Colin, here the place whose pleasaunt syte
From other shades hath weand my wandring minde.
Tell me, what wants me here to work delyte?
The simple ayre, the gentle warbling winde,
So calm, so cool, as no where else I finde;
The Grassie ground, with daintie Daysies dight;
The Bramble bush, where byrdes of every kinde
To the waters' fall their tunes attemper right."

From Spenser we come to Shakespeare, and when we remember the vast
acquaintance with flowers of every kind that he shows, and especially
when we remember how often he almost seems to go out of his way to tell
of the simple wild flowers of Englan