—­The stern Achilles
    Stalked through a mead of daffodillies”

THE LAUREL

Daphne was a beautiful nymph beloved by that very amorous gentleman, Apollo.  The love was not reciprocal.  She endeavored to escape his godship’s importunities by flight.  Apollo overtook her.  She at that instant solicited aid from heaven, and was at once turned into a laurel.  Apollo gathered a wreath from the tree and placing it on his own immortal brows, decreed that from that hour the laurel should be sacred to his divinity.

THE SUN-FLOWER

    Who can unpitying see the flowery race
    Shed by the morn then newflushed bloom resign,
    Before the parching beam?  So fade the fair,
    When fever revels in their azure veins
    But one, the lofty follower of the sun,
    Sad when he sits shuts up her yellow leaves,
    Drooping all night, and when he warm return,
    Points her enamoured bosom to his ray

Thomson.

THE SUN-FLOWER (Helianthus) was once the fair nymph Clytia.  Broken-hearted at the falsehood of her lover, Apollo, (who has so many similar sins to answer for) she pined away and died.  When it was too late Apollo’s heart relented, and in honor of true affection he changed poor Clytia into a Sun-flower.[073] It is sometimes called Tourne-sol—­a word that signifies turning to the sun.  Thomas Moore helps to keep the old story in remembrance by the concluding couplet of one of his sweetest ballads.

    Oh! the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
    But as truly loves on to its close
    As the sun flower turns on her god when he sets
    The same look that she turned when he rose

But Moore has here poetized a vulgar error.  Most plants naturally turn towards the light, but the sun-flower (in spite of its name) is perhaps less apt to turn itself towards Apollo than the majority of other flowers for it has a stiff stem and a number of heavy heads.  At all events it does not change its attitude in the course of the day.  The flower-disk that faces the morning sun has it back to it in the evening.

Gerard calls the sun-flower “The Flower of the Sun or the Marigold of Peru”.  Speaking of it in the year 1596 he tells us that he had some in his own garden in Holborn that had grown to the height of fourteen feet.

THE WALL-FLOWER

    The weed is green, when grey the wall,
    And blossoms rise where turrets fall

Herrick gives us a pretty version of the story of the WALL-FLOWER, (cheiranthus cheiri)("the yellow wall-flower stained with iron brown”)