stars are

A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves _a star_.

But might we not with equal justice say that every thing excellent and
beautiful and precious has named itself _a flower_?

If stars teach as well as shine--so do flowers. In "still small accents"
they charm "the nice and delicate ear of thought" and sweetly whisper
that "the hand that made them is divine."

The stars are the poetry of heaven--the clouds are the poetry of the
middle sky--the flowers are the poetry of the earth. The last is the
loveliest to the eye and the nearest to the heart. It is incomparably
the sweetest external poetry that Nature provides for man. Its
attractions are the most popular; its language is the most intelligible.
It is of all others the best adapted to every variety and degree of
mind. It is the most endearing, the most familiar, the most homefelt,
and congenial. The stars are for the meditation of poets and
philosophers; but flowers are not exclusively for the gifted or the
scientific; they are the property of all. They address themselves to our
common nature. They are equally the delight of the innocent little
prattler and the thoughtful sage. Even the rude unlettered rustic
betrays some feeling for the beautiful in the presence of the lovely
little community of the field and garden. He has no sympathy for the
stars: they are too mystical and remote. But the flowers as they blush
and smile beneath his eye may stir the often deeply hidden lovingness
and gentleness of his nature. They have a social and domestic aspect to
which no one with a human heart can be quite indifferent. Few can doat
upon the distant flowers of the sky as many of us doat upon the flowers
at our feet. The stars are wholly independent of man: not so the sweet
children of Flora. We tend upon and cherish them with a parental pride.
They seem especially meant for man and man for them. They often need his
kindest nursing. We place them with guardian hand in the brightest light
and the most wholesome air. We quench with liquid life their sun-raised
thirst, or shelter them from the wintry blast, or prepare and enrich
their nutritious beds. As they pine or prosper they agitate us with
tender anxieties, or thrill us with exultation and delight. In the
little plot of ground that fronts an English cottage the flowers are
like members of the household. They ar