Who would wish to live without flowers? Where would the poet fly for his images of beauty, if they were to perish forever? Are they not the emblems of loveliness and innocence - the living types of all that is pleasing and graceful? We compare young lips to the rose, and the white brow to the radiant lily; the winning eye gathers its glow from the violet, and the sweet voice is like a breeze kissing its way through the flowers. We hang delicate blossoms on the silken ringlets of the young bride, and strew her path with the fragrant bells when she leaves the church. We place them around the marble face of the dead in the narrow coffin, and they become symbols of our affections - pleasures remembered and hopes faded, wishes flown, and scenes cherished the more that they can never return. Still we look to the far-off spring in other valleys - to the eternal summer beyond the grave, when the flowers which have faded shall again bloom in starry fields; where no rude winter can intrude. They come upon us in spring like the recollections of a dream, which hovered above us in sleep, peopled with shadowy beauties and purple delights, fancy broidered. Sweet flowers I that bring before our eyes scenes of childhood - faces remembered in youth, when Love was a stranger to himself.

The mossy bank by the wayside, where we so often sat for hours drinking in the beauty of the primroses with our eyes; the sheltered glen, darkly green, filled with the perfume of violets, that shone in their intense blue like another sky spread upon the earth; the laughter of merry voices; the sweet song of the maiden - the downcast eye, the spreading blush, the kiss ashamed at its own sound - -are all brought back to the memory by a flower. - Miller.