d as having such specific sense of men's drooping under
weight; or towards death, under the burden of fortune which they have no
more strength to sustain;[31] compare the passage {101} I quoted from
Plato, ('Crown of Wild Olive,' p. 95): "And bore lightly the burden of gold
and of possessions." {102} And thus you will begin to understand how the
poppy became in the heathen mind the type at once of power, or pride, and
of its loss; and therefore, both why Virgil represents the white nymph
Nais, "pallentes violas, et summa papavera carpens,"--gathering the pale
flags, and the highest poppies,--and the reason for the choice of this
rather than any other flower, in the story of Tarquin's message to his son.

14. But you are next to remember the word Rhoeas in another sense. Whether
originally intended or afterwards caught at, the resemblance of the word to
'Rhoea,' a pomegranate, mentally connects itself with the resemblance of
the poppy head to the pomegranate fruit.

And if I allow this flower to be the first we take up for careful study in
Proserpina, on account of its simplicity of form and splendour of colour, I
wish you also to remember, in connection with it, the cause of Proserpine's
eternal captivity--her having tasted a pomegranate seed,--the pomegranate
being in Greek mythology what the apple is in the Mosaic legend; and, in
the whole {103} worship of Demeter, associated with the poppy by a
multitude of ideas which are not definitely expressed, but can only be
gathered out of Greek art and literature, as we learn their symbolism. The
chief character on which these thoughts are founded is the fulness of seed
in the poppy and pomegranate, as an image of life: then the forms of both
became adopted for beads or bosses in ornamental art; the pomegranate
remains more distinctly a Jewish and Christian type, from its use in the
border of Aaron's robe, down to the fruit in the hand of Angelico's and
Botticelli's Infant Christs; while the poppy is gradually confused by the
Byzantine Greeks with grapes; and both of these with palm fruit. The palm,
in the shorthand of their art, gradually becomes a symmetrical branched
ornament with two pendent bosses; this is again confused with the Greek
iris, (Homer's blue iris, and Pindar's water-flag,)--and the Florentines,
in adopting Byzantine ornament, read it into their own Fleur-de-lys; but
insert two poppyheads on each side of the entire foil, in their finest
heraldry.

15. Meant