The belled group, of the hyacinth and convallaria, is as delicate as the other is coarse; the unspeakable azure light along the ground of the wood hyacinth in English spring; the grape hyacinth, which is in south France, as if a cluster of grapes and a hive of honey had been distilled and compressed together into one small boss of celled and beaded blue; the lilies of the valley everywhere, in each sweet and wild recess of rocky lands,—­count the influences of these on childish and innocent life; then measure the mythic power of the hyacinth and asphodel as connected with Greek thoughts of immortality; finally take their useful and nourishing power in ancient and modern peasant life, and it will be strange if you do not feel what fixed relation exists between the agency of the creating spirit in these, and in us who live by them.

84.  It is impossible to bring into any tenable compass for our present purpose, even hints of the human influence of the two remaining orders of Amaryllids and Irids; only note this generally, that while these in northern countries share with the Primulas the fields of spring, it seems that in Greece, the primulaceae are not an extended tribe, while the crocus, narcissus, and Amaryllis lutea, the “lily of the field” (I suspect also that the flower whose name we translate “violet” was in truth an iris) represented to the Greek the first coming of the breath of life on the renewed herbage; and became in his thoughts the true embroidery of the saffron robe of Athena.  Later in the year, the dianthus (which, though belonging to an entirely different race of plants, has yet a strange look of being made out of the grasses by turning the sheath-membrane at the root of their leaves into a flower) seems to scatter, in multitudinous families, its crimson stars far and wide.  But the golden lily and crocus, together with the asphodel, retain always the old Greek’s fondest thoughts,—­they are only “golden” flowers that are to burn on the trees, and float on the streams of paradise.

85.  I have but one tribe of plants more to note at our country feast—­ the savory herbs; but must go a little out of my way to come at them rightly.  All flowers whose petals are fastened together, and most of those whose petals are loose, are best thought of first as a kind of cup or tube opening at the mouth.  Sometimes the opening is gradual, as in the convolvulus or campanula; oftener there is a distinct change of direction between the tube and expanding lip, as in the primrose; or even a contraction under the lip, making the tube into a narrow-necked phial or vase, as in the heaths; but the general idea of a tube expanding into a quatrefoil, cinquefoil, or sixfoil, will embrace most of the forms.