DAISY (Bellis perennis). Shakespeare often mentions the daisy. With "violets blue" "lady-smocks all silver-white," and "cuckoo-buds of every hue," it "paints the meadows with delight" in that delightful spring-song in "Love's Labour's Lost."[34] Shakespeare also uses this flower as a beautiful comparison for the delicate hand of Lucrece in "The Rape of Lucrece":[35]

The daisy is among the flowers in the fantastic garlands that poor Ophelia wove before her death.[36]

The botanical name Bellis shows the origin of the flower. Belides, a beautiful Dryad, trying to escape the pursuit of Vertumnus, god of gardens and orchards, prayed to the gods for help; and they changed her into the tiny flower. In allusion to this Rapin wrote:

The daisy was under the care of Venus. It has been beloved by English poets ever since Chaucer sang the praises of the day's eye—daisy. Chaucer tells us, in what is perhaps the most worshipful poem ever addressed to a flower, that he always rose early and went out to the fields, or meadows, to pay his devotions to this "flower of flowers," whose praises he intended to sing while ever his life lasted, and he bemoaned the fact, moreover, that he had not words at his command to do it proper reverence.

Next to Chaucer in paying homage to the daisy comes Wordsworth with his

"Daisies smell-less yet most quaint" is a line from the flower-song in "The Two Noble Kinsmen," written by John Fletcher and Shakespeare.[37]

Milton speaks of

and Dryden pays a tribute to which even Chaucer would approve:

The English daisy is "The wee, modest crimson-tipped flower," as Burns has described it, and must not be confused with the daisy that powders the fields and meadows in our Southern States with a snow of white blossoms supported on tall stems. This daisy, called sometimes the moon-daisy (Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum), is known in England as the midsummer daisy and ox-eye. In France it is called marguerite and paquerette. Being a midsummer flower, it is dedicated to St. John the Baptist. It is also associated with St. Margaret and Mary Magdalen, and from the latter it derives the names of maudlin and maudelyne. As Ophelia drowned herself in midsummer the daisies that are described in her wreath are most probably marguerites and not the "day's eye" of Chaucer.

Parkinson does not separate daisies very particularly. "They are usually called in Latin," he tells us, "Bellides and in English Daisies. Some of them Herba Margarita and Primula veris, as is likely after the Italian names of Marguerita and Flor di prima vera gentile. The French call them Paquerettes and Marguerites; and the fruitful sort, or those that have small flowers about the middle one, Margueritons. Our English women call them Jack-an-Apes-on-Horseback."

The daisy that an Elizabethan poet quaintly describes as a Tudor princess resembles the midsummer daisy rather than the "wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower" of Burns:

Also Browne in his "Pastorals" seems to be thinking of this flower:

VIOLET (Viola odorata). The violet was considered "a choice flower of delight" in English gardens. Shakespeare speaks of the violet on many occasions and always with tenderness and deep appreciation of its qualities. Violets are among the flowers that the frightened Proserpine dropped from Pluto's ebon car—

Thus in Shakespeare's opinion the violet out-sweetened both Juno, majestic queen of heaven, and Venus, goddess of love and beauty.

How could he praise the violet more?

Shakespeare informs us in "King John."[39] With the utmost delicacy of perfection he describes Titania's favorite haunt as

In truth, the tiny flower seems to nod among its leaves.

Shakespeare makes the elegant Duke in "Twelfth Night," who is lounging nonchalantly on his divan, compare the music he hears to the breeze blowing upon a bank of violets[41] (see page 44).

Shelley held the same idea that the delicious perfume of flowers is like the softest melody:

Ophelia laments that she has no violets to give to the court ladies and lords, for "they withered" when her father died, she tells us. Shakespeare also associates violets with melancholy occasions. Marina enters in "Pericles" with a basket of flowers on her arm, saying:[42]

On another occasion, with a broad sweeping gesture, Shakespeare mentions

In "Sonnet XCIX" he writes:

Bacon deemed it most necessary "to know what flowers and plants do best perfume the air," and he thought "that which above all others yields the sweetest smell is the violet, and next to that the musk-rose." (See page 44.)

"Perhaps of all Warwickshire flowers," writes a native of Shakespeare's country, "none are so plentiful as violets; our own little churchyard of Whitechurch is sheeted with them. They grow in every hedgebank until the whole air is filled with their fragrance. The wastes near Stratford are sometimes purple as far as the eyes can see with the flowers of viola canina. Our English violets are twelve in number. The plant is still used in medicine and acquired of late a notoriety as a suggested cancer cure; and in Shakespeare's time was eaten raw with onions and lettuces and also mingled in broth and used to garnish dishes, while crystallized violets are not unknown in the present day."

For the beauty of its form, for the depth and richness of its color, for the graceful drooping of its stalk and the nodding of its head, for its lovely heart-shaped leaf and above all for its delicious perfume, the violet is admired. Then when we gaze into its tiny face and note the delicacy of its veins, which Shakespeare so often mentions, we gain a sense of its deeper beauty and significance.

Dr. Forbes Watson observed:

"I give one instance of Nature's care for the look of the stamens and pistils of a flower. In the blossom of the Scented Violet the stamens form, by their convergence, a little orange beak. At the end of this beak is the summit of the pistil, a tiny speck of green, but barely visible to the naked eye. Yet small as it is, it completes the color of the flower, by softening the orange, and we can distinctly see that if this mere point were removed, there would be imperfection for the want of it."

St. Francis de Sales, a contemporary of Shakespeare, gave a lovely description of the flower when he said:

"A true widow is in the Church as a March Violet, shedding around an exquisite perfume by the fragrance of her devotion and always hidden under the ample leaves of her lowliness and by her subdued coloring, showing the spirit of her mortification. She seeks untrodden and solitary places."

The violet's qualities of lowliness, humility, and sweetness have always appealed to poets. The violet is also beloved because it is one of the earliest spring flowers. Violets are, like primroses and cowslips,

The violet was also an emblem of constancy. At the floral games, instituted by Clemence Isaure at Toulouse in the Fourteenth Century, the prize was a golden violet, because the poetess had once sent a violet to her Knight as a token of faithfulness. With the Troubadours the violet was a symbol of constancy. In "A Handful of Pleasant Delights," a popular song-book published in Elizabeth's reign in 1566, there is a poem called "A Nosegay always Sweet for Lovers to send Tokens of Love at New Year's tide, or for Fairings, as they in their minds shall be disposed to write." This poem contains a verse to the violet:

The violet has always held a loved place in the English garden. Gerard writes quaintly in his "Herbal":

"The Black, or Purple Violets, or March Violets, of the garden have a great prerogative above all others, not only because the mind conceiveth a certain pleasure and recreation by smelling and handling of those most odoriferous flowers, but also for the very many by these Violets receive ornament and comely grace; for there be made of them garlands for the head, nosegays and poesies, which are delightful to look on and pleasant to smell to, speaking nothing of their appropriate virtues; yea, gardens themselves receive by these the greatest ornament of all chiefest beauty and most gallant grace; and the recreation of the mind, which is taken thereby, cannot but be very good and honest; for they admonish and stir up a man to that which is comely and honest; for flowers through their beauty, variety of color and exquisite form do bring to a liberal and great mind the remembrance of honesty, comeliness and all kinds of virtue."

Proserpine was gathering violets among other flowers in the fields of Enna in Sicily when Pluto carried her off. Shakespeare touched upon the story most exquisitely, through the lips of Perdita, as quoted above.

Another Greek myth accounts for the Greek word for the violet, which is ion. It seems when, in order to protect her from the persecutions of Juno, Jove transformed lovely Europa into a white heifer whom he named Io, he caused sweet violets to spring up from the earth wherever the white cow placed her lips; and from her name, Io, the flower acquired the name ion.

The Athenians adored the flower. Tablets were engraved with the word ion and set up everywhere in Athens; and of all sobriquets the citizens preferred that of "Athenian crowned with violets."

The Persians also loved the violet and made a delicious wine from it. A sherbet flavored with violet blossoms is served in Persia and Arabia to-day at feasts; and Mohammedans say: "The excellence of the violet is as the excellence of El Islam above all other religions."