Here’s flowers for you,

Hot lavender, mint, savory, majoram,
The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun,
And with him rises weeping these are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think they are given
To men of middle age.

* * * * *

        O, Proserpina,

For the flowers now that, frighted, thou lett’st fall
From Dis’s waggon!  Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty, violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,
Or Cytherea’s breath, pale primroses,
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Great Phoebus in his strength,—­a malady
Most incident to maids, bold oxlips and
The crown imperial, lilies of all kinds,
The flower de luce being one

Shakespeare here, as elsewhere, speaks of “pale primroses.”  The poets almost always allude to the primrose as a pale and interesting invalid.  Milton tells us of

    The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose[060]

The poet in the manuscript of his Lycidas had at first made the primrose “die unwedded,” which was a pretty close copy of Shakespeare.  Milton afterwards struck out the word “unwedded,” and substituted the word “forsaken.”  The reason why the primrose was said to “die unmarried,” is, according to Warton, because it grows in the shade uncherished or unseen by the sun, who was supposed to be in love with certain sorts of flowers.  Ben Jonson, however, describes the primrose as a wedded lady—­“the Spring’s own Spouse”—­though she is certainly more commonly regarded as the daughter of Spring not the wife.  J Fletcher gives her the true parentage:—­

    Primrose, first born child of Ver

There are some kinds of primroses, that are not pale.  There is a species in Scotland, which is of a deep purple.  And even in England (in some of the northern counties) there is a primrose, the bird’s-eye primrose, (Primula farinosa,) of which the blossom is lilac colored and the leaves musk-scented.

In Sweden they call the Primrose The key of May.

The primrose is always a great favorite with imaginative and sensitive observers, but there are too many people who look upon the beautiful with a utilitarian eye, or like Wordsworth’s Peter Bell regard it with perfect indifference.

    A primrose by the river’s brim
    A yellow primrose was to him. 
    And it was nothing more.