_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.
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