F is for FLOWERS

What a desolate place would be a world without a flower! It would be a face without a smile, a feast without a welcome. Are not flowers the stars of the earth, and are not our stars the flowers of heaven?

Mrs. Clara Lucas Balfour

Sweet letters of the angel tongue,
I've loved ye long and well,
And never have failed in your fragrance sweet
To find some secret spell,--
A charm that has bound me with witching power,
For mine is the old belief,
That midst your sweets and midst your bloom,
There's a soul in every leaf!

Mathurin M. Ballou, Flowers

He must have an artist's eye for color and form who can arrange a hundred flowers as tastefully, in any other way, as by strolling through a garden, and picking here one and there one, and adding them to the bouquet in the accidental order in which they chance to come. Thus we see every summer day the fair lady coming in from the breezy side hill with gorgeous colors and most witching effects. If only she could be changed to alabaster, was ever a finer show of flowers in so fine a vase? But instead of allowing the flowers to remain as they were gathered, they are laid upon the table, divided, rearranged on some principle of taste, I know not what, but never again have that charming naturalness and grace which they first had.

Henry Ward Beecher



It gives one a sudden start in going down a barren, stony street, to see upon a narrow strip of grass, just within the iron fence, the radiant dandelion, shining in the grass, like a spark dropped from the sun.

Henry Ward Beecher




What a pity flowers can utter no sound! A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle--oh, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be!

Henry Ward Beecher






Flowers are Love's truest language; they betray,
Like the divining rods of Magi old,
Where precious wealth lies buried, not of gold,
But love--strong love, that never can decay!

Park Benjamin



To create a little flower is the labor of ages.


William Blake



Thick on the woodland floor
Gay company shall be,
Primrose and Hyacinth
And frail Anemone,
Perennial Strawberry-bloom,
Woodsorrel's pencilled veil,
Dishevel'd Willow-weed
And Orchis purple and pale.

Robert Seymour Bridges



I have loved flowers that fade,
Within those magic tents
Rich hues have marriage made
With sweet unmemoried scents.


Robert Seymour Bridges



Brazen helm of daffodillies,
With a glitter toward the light.
Purple violets for the mouth,
Breathing perfumes west and south;
And a sword of flashing lilies,
Holden ready for the fight.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning






Where fall the tears of love the rose appears,
And where the ground is bright with friendship's tears,
Forget-me-not, and violets, heavenly blue,
Spring glittering with the cheerful drops like dew.

William Cullen Bryant



Who that has loved knows not the tender tale
Which flowers reveal, when lips are coy to tell?


Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton



Rose, what is become of thy delicate hue?
And where is the violet's beautiful blue?
Does aught of its sweetness the blossom beguile?
That meadow, those daisies, why do they not smile?

John Byrom



Ye field flowers! the gardens eclipse you 'tis true:
Yet wildings of nature, I dote upon you,
For ye waft me to summers of old,
When the earth teem'd around me with fairy delight,
And when daisies and buttercups gladden'd my sight,
Like treasures of silver and gold.

Thomas Campbell



I know not which I love the most,
Nor which the comeliest shows,
The timid, bashful violet
Or the royal-hearted rose:
The pansy in purple dress,
The pink with cheek of red,
Or the faint, fair heliotrope, who hangs,
Like a bashful maid her head.

Phoebe Cary

Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain,
Of his unrivall'd pencil. He inspires
Their balmy odors, and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes
In grains as countless as the seaside sands,
The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth
Happy who walks with him!

William Cowper

Flowers are words
Which even a babe may understand.

Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe,



Like saintly vestals, pale in prayer, their pure breath sanctifies the air.

Julia Caroline Ripley Dorr




The harebells nod as she passes by,
The violet lifts its tender eye,
The ferns bend her steps to greet,
And the mosses creep to her dancing feet.

Julia Caroline Ripley Dorr, Over the Wall



The rose is fragrant, but it fades in time:
The violet sweet, but quickly past the prime:
White lilies hang their heads, and soon decay,
And white snow in minutes melts away.

John Dryden





I always think the flowers can see us, and know what we are thinking about.

George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans Cross)



I think I am quite wicked with roses. I like to gather them, and smell them till they have no scent left.


George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans Cross)



The amen! of nature is always a flower.


Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.




I remember, I remember
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs, where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday,--
The tree is living yet.

Thomas Hood



He is happiest who hath power to gather wisdom from a flower.

Mary Howitt






Growing one's own choice words and fancies
In orange tubs, and beds of pansies'
One's sighs and passionate declarations,
In odorous rhetoric of carnations.

Leigh Hunt (James Henry Leigh Hunt)



One thing is certain and the rest is lies:
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

Omar Khayyam



Leaves are the Greek, flowers the Italian, phase of the spirit of beauty that reveals itself through the flora of the globe.

Thomas Starr King



I do love violets; they tell the history of woman's love.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (Mrs. George MacLean)



And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies.

Christopher Marlowe






Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.

John Milton



Sweet flowers alone can say what passion fears revealing.

Thomas Moore



Yet, no--not words, for they
But half can tell love's feeling;
Sweet flowers alone can say
What passion fears revealing:
A once bright rose's wither'd leaf,
A tow'ring lily broken,--
Oh, these may paint a grief
No words could e'er have spoken.

Thomas Moore



People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.

Iris Murdoch



Flowers belong to Fairyland: the flowers and the birds and the butterflies are all that the world has kept of its golden age--the only perfectly beautiful things on earth--joyous, innocent, half divine--useless, say they who are wiser than God.

Ouida (pseudonym of Marie Louise de la Ramee)



He bore a simple wild-flower wreath:
Narcissus, and the sweet brier rose;
Vervain, and flexible thyme, that breathe
Rich fragrance; modest heath, that glows
With purple bells; the amaranth bright,
That no decay, no fading knows,
Like true love's holiest, rarest light;
And every purest flower, that blows
In that sweet time, which Love most blesses,
When spring on summer's confines presses.

Thomas Love Peacock



Sweet flower, thou tellest how hearts as pure and tender as thy leaf, as low and humble as thy stem, will surely know the joy that peace imparts.


James Gates Percival



In Eastern lands they talk in flowers,
And they tell in a garland their loves and cares;
Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers,
On its leaves a mystic language bears.

James Gates Percival



"If flowers have souls," said Undine, "the bees, whose nurses they are, must seem to them darling children at the breast. I once fancied a paradise for the spirits of departed flowers." "They go," answered I, "not into paradise, but into a middle state; the souls of lilies enter into maidens' foreheads, those of hyacinths and forget-me-nots dwell in their eyes, and those of roses in their lips."

Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (Johann Paul Richter) (used ps. Jean Paul)



Flowers preach to us if we will hear.

Christina Georgina Rossetti




Flowers are like the pleasures of the world.

William Shakespeare



Sweet flowers are slow, and weeds make haste.


William Shakespeare



And the spring arose on the garden fair like the spirit of Love felt everywhere.


Percy Bysshe Shelley



Day stars! that ope your frownless eyes to twinkle
From rainbow galaxies of earth's creation,
And dew-drops on her lonely altars sprinkle
As a libation.

Horace (Horatio) Smith





Ye bright Mosaics! That with storied beauty,
The floor of Nature's temple tesselate,
What numerous emblems of instructive duty
Your forms create!

Horace (Horatio) Smith



Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a brere;
Sweet is the juniper, but sharp his bough;
Sweet is the eglantine, but stiketh nere;
Sweet is the firbloome, but its braunches rough;
Sweet is the cypress, but its rynd is tough;
Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill;
Sweet is the broome-flowre, but yet sowre enough;
And sweet is moly, but his root is ill.

Edmund Spenser




Roses red and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew.

Edmund Spenser





With roses musky-breathed,
And drooping daffodilly,
And silver-leaved lily.
And ivy darkly-wreathed
I wove a crown before her,
For her I love so dearly.


Lord Alfred Tennyson, Anacreontics



There is to the poetical sense a ravishing prophecy and winsome intimation in flowers that now and then, from the influence of mood of circumstance, reasserts itself like the reminiscence of childhood, or the spell of love.

Henry Theodore Tuckerman



To analyze the charms of flowers is like dissecting music; it is one of those things which it is far better to enjoy than to attempt to understand.

Henry Theodore Tuckerman



The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.


William Wordsworth,



Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises.


William Wordsworth, To the Small Celandine