The Floral Fortune-teller/Red Flowers
PART V.
RED, SCARLET, AND PINK
FLOWERS.
Describing the Character of your Future Companion.
BALSAMINE.
With wealth enough, and young and beauteous,
Brought up as best becomes a gentlewoman;
Her only fault,—and that is faults enough,—
Is, that she is intolerable curst
And shrewd and froward; so beyond all measure,
That I would not wed her for a mine of gold.
CANDY TUFT.
More than the light of common day shines there;
A holier triumph, and a sterner aim.
Than any woman in this waning age.
CARDINAL FLOWER.
He speaks three or four languages, word for word, without book, and hath all the good gifts of nature.
When she speaks, is it not an alarum to love? She is, indeed, perfection. So delicate with her needle! An admirable musician! Oh she will sing the savageness out of a bear.
CATCHFLY.
And yet I promise thee she shall be rich,
And very rich.
CHRYSANTHEMUM.
He can indulge without restraint; can give
A princely patronage to every art.
CLOVER.
He wears no mask—he hates all crooked ways,
He is so good, so noble.
She is not hot, but temperate as the morn;
For patience, she will prove a second Grissel,
And Roman Lucrece for chastity.
DAHLIA.
Down into modern use; transforms old print
To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes
Of gallery critics by a thousand arts.
Her beauty and her brain go not together. She’s a good sign, but I have seen small reflection of her wit.
EGLANTINE.
The truest manner’d; such a holy witch,
That he enchants societies unto him;
Half all men’s hearts are his.
She’s an excellent sweet lady, and out of all suspicion, she is virtuous.
FOUR O’CLOCK
And making happy.
In music, instruments, and poetry.
GERANIUM.
That can be struck and hammer’d out to suit
Another’s taste and fancy. He ’ll not dance
To every tune of every minister,
It goes against his nature—he can’t do it.
GILLY FLOWER.
A time-pleaser; so crammed, as he thinks, with excellences, that it is his ground of faith, that all that look on him love him.
Nor take no shape nor project of affection,
She is so self-endeared.
HOLLYHOCK.
A pleasant-spirited lady. There’s little of the melancholy element in her.
HONEYSUCKLE.
He hath a kind of honor sets him off
More than a mortal seeming.
Ran on the green sward; nothing she does or seems
But smacks of something greater than herself.
KALMIA.
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
So tender of rebukes that words are strokes,
And strokes death to her.
LOVE-LIES-BLEEDING.
In growing; modest eyes, a hand, a foot
Lessening in perfect cadence, and a skin
As white and clean as privet when it flowers.
MALLOWS.
Darker than darkest pansies; hair
More black than ashbuds in the front of March.
PINK.
By birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, and now, by present profession, a tinker.
As Socrates’ Xantippe.
PHLOX.
And little recks to find the way to Heaven
By doing deeds of hospitality.
To comb your noddle with a three legg’d stool,
And paint your face, and use you like a fool.
POPPY.
In conversation frivolous in dress
Extreme ; at once rapacious and profuse;
Frequent in park with lady at his side,
Ambling, and prattling scandal as he goes,
But rare at home, and never at his books,
Or with his pen, save when he scrawls a card;
Constant at routs, familiar with a round
Of ladyships, a stranger to the poor.
As hazel nuts, and sweeter than the kernel.
PRIMROSE.
As is the other for beauteous modesty.
PEONY.
She is a handsome wee thing,
She is a bonnie wee thing,
This sweet wee wife of thine.
ROSE.
Of wondrous beauty and of bounty rare,
Full of great love.
SWEET WILLIAM.
He’s gentle; never schooled, and yet learned; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved.
For man’s protection.
SWEET PEA.
In fair round belly, with good capon lined,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances.
With an Italian exile’s dark-eyed daughter.
TULIP.
His office sacred, his credentials clear.
By him the violated law speaks out
Its thunders; and by him, in strains as sweet
As angels use, the Gospel whispers peace.
Blessing and blest where’er she goes.
VERBENA.
Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day
More than the wild-cat.
Happy in this, she is not yet so old
But she may learn; happier than this,
She is not bred so dull but she can learn;
Happiest of all is, that her gentle spirit
Commits itself to yours to be directed,
As from her lord, her governor, her king.
VIRGIN’S BOWER.
He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block.
Thou shalt have a pleasant home;
She will order all things duly,
When beneath your roof you come.
ZINNIA.
If she be furnished with a mind so rare,
She is alone the Arabian bird.
