Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/129

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Are twin-born sisters, and do mix their eyes, As, if you sever one, the other dies. Why did the Gods give thee a heavenly form And earthly thoughts to make thee proud of it? Why, do I ask?—'Tis now the known disease That Beauty hath, to bear too deep a sense Of her own self-conceived excellence. Oh! hadst thou known the worth of Heaven's rich gift, Thou wouldst have turned it to a truer use, And not (with starved and covetous ignorance) Pined in continual eyeing that bright gem, The glance whereof to others had been more, Than to thy famished mind the wide world's store.

Shelley, in the exquisite description of flowers in his Poem of the "Sensitive Plant," calls

Narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness.

The scent of the Narcissus, too, is extremely fragrant, and when adorning our windows in wintry weather, how delightfully does the perfumed air of the snug, fire-enlivened study seem to whisper, or at least breathe, of Summer's sweet children and merry blue sky! Yes, the Narcissus is sweet, but it yields the palm of fragrance to its modest neighbour in the wreath. Who does not know that

Violets, dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath,

have their humble dwelling-places in our English lanes? Who has not seen them on many a sunny bank, in early