here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale Primrose, nor
The azured Harebell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of Eglantine; whom not to slander,
Out-sweetened not thy breath.

_Cymbeline_.

Here are two more flower-passages from Shakespeare.

Here's a few flowers; but about midnight more;
The herbs that have on them cold dew o' the night
Are strewings fitt'st for graves.--Upon their faces:--
You were as flowers; now withered; even so
These herblets shall, which we upon you strow.

_Cymbeline_.

Sweets to the sweet. Farewell!
I hoped thou shoulds't have been my Hamlet's wife;
I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid,
And not t' have strewed thy grave.

_Hamlet_.

Flowers are peculiarly suitable ornaments for the grave, for as Evelyn
truly says, "they are just emblems of the life of man, which has been
compared in Holy Scripture to those fading creatures, whose roots being
buried in dishonor rise again in glory."[061]

This thought is natural and just. It is indeed a most impressive sight,
a most instructive pleasure, to behold some "bright consummate flower"
rise up like a radiant exhalation or a beautiful vision--like good from
evil--with such stainless purity and such dainty loveliness, from the
hot-bed of corruption.

Milton turns his acquaintance with flowers to divine account in his
Lycidas.

Return; Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye vallies low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks;
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers.
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies.
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,[062]
And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies,
For, so to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with faint