which Burns has so sweetly
commemorated is the same flower that was "of all flowres the flowre," in
the estimation of the Patriarch of English poets, and which so delighted
Wordsworth in his childhood, in his middle life, and in his old age. He
gazed on it, at intervals, with unchanging affection for upwards of
fourscore years.

The Daisy--the miniature sun with its tiny rays--is especially the
favorite of our earliest years. In our remembrances of the happy meadows
in which we played in childhood, the daisy's silver lustre is ever
connected with the deeper radiance of its gay companion, the butter-cup,
which when held against the dimple on the cheek or chin of beauty turns
it into a little golden dell. The thoughtful and sensitive frequenter of
rural scenes discovers beauty every where; though it is not always the
sort of beauty that would satisfy the taste of men who recognize no
gaiety or loveliness beyond the walls of cities. To the poet's eye even
the freckles on a milk-maid's brow are not without a grace, associated
as they are with health, and the open sunshine.

Chaucer tells us that the French call the Daisy _La belle Marguerite_.
There is a little anecdote connected with the appellation. Marguerite of
Scotland, the Queen of Louis the Eleventh, presented Marguerite Clotilde
de Surville, a poetess, with a bouquet of daisies, with this
inscription; "Marguerite d'Ecosse a Marguerite (_the pearl_) d'Helicon."

The country maidens in England practise a kind of sortilege with this
flower. They pluck off leaf by leaf, saying alternately "_He loves me_"
and "_He loves me not_." The omen or oracle is decided by the fall of
either sentence on the last leaf.

It is extremely difficult to rear the daisy in India. It is accustomed
to all weathers in England, but the long continued sultriness of this
clime makes it as delicate as a languid English lady in a tropical
exile, and however carefully and skilfully nursed, it generally pines
for its native air and dies.[088]

THE PRICKLY GORSE.

--Yon swelling downs where the sweet air stirs
The harebells, and where prickly furze
Buds lavish gold.

_Keat's Endymion_.

Fair maidens, I'll sing you a song,
I'll tell of the bonny wild flower,
Whose blossoms so yellow, and branches so long,
O'er moor and o'er rough rocky mountains are flung
Far away from trim garden and bower

_L.A. Tuamley_.

The PRICKLY GORSE or Goss or Furze, (_ulex_)[08