Bring flowers, fresh flowers, for the bride to wear!
They were born to blush in her shining nair,
She is leaving the home of her childhood's mirth,
She hath bid farewell to her father's hearth;
Her place is now by another's side-

Bring flowers for the locks of the fair young bride!
Bring flowers, pale flowers, on the bier to shed,
A crown for the brow of the early dead;

For this, through its leaves, hath the white rose burst;
For this, in the woods, was the violet nursed;

Though they smile in vain for what once was ours,
They are love's last gift-bring ye flowers, pale flowers!

Bring flowers to the shrine where we kneel in prayer,
They are nature's offering, their place is there!
They speak of hope to the fainting heart,
With a voice of promise they come and part,
They sleep in dust through the winter hours,
They break forth in glory — bring flowers, bright
flowers!

Let us now take a picture of a marriage ceremony at Corinth, in the old times of her glory and luxury:

The day of espousals was over,

And on the crowning day,
To the sacred fane the bridal train,

A gay procession take again

Through thronging streets, their way.

Before them by the Paranymphs,

The coronals are borne,

Composed of all sweet flowers of spring
By virgin hands that morn.

With lighted tapers in array

They enter the holy door,

And the priest with the waving thuribule
Perfumes the way before.

Then in the ever-blessed name,

Almighty, over all,

From the man's paranymph he took

The marriage coronal.

And crowning him therewith, in that
Thrice holy name, he said :-
"Eleemon, the servant of God, is crowned
For Cyra, the Lord's handmaid!"

Next, with like action, and like words,

Upon her brow he set

Her coronal; entwined wherein,

The rose and lily met;

How beautifully they beseemed

Her locks of glossy jet!"

In a note to the above the author quotes from DR. KING'S Rites: "Formerly these crowns were garlands made of flowers or shrubs; but now there are generally in all churches, crowns of silver or other metals, kept for that purpose." He furthes states, that BISHOP HEBER, Writing from the Carnatic, alludes to "a certain crown of flowers, used in marriages."

THE BRIDAL

AND

THE BURIAL,

BY JAMES MONTGOMERY.

Blessed is the bride whom the sun shines on;
Blessed is the corpse which the rain rains on.

I saw thee young and beautiful,
I saw thee rich and gay,

In the first blush of womanhood,
Upon thy wedding-day:

The church bells rang,

And the little children sang

"Flowers, flowers, kiss her feet;
Sweets to the sweet!

The winter is past, the rains are gone;
Blessed is the bride whom the sun shines on."

I saw thee poor and desolate,
I saw thee fade away,

In broken-hearted widowhood,
Before thy locks were grey;
The death-bell rang,

And the little children sang,

"Lilies dress her winding sheet;

Sweets to the sweet!

The summer's past, the sunshine's gone;

Blessed is the corpse which the rain rains on."

203

CHAPTER VII.

FUNERAL FLOWERS.

"FLOWERS, wherefore do ye bloom!

We strew the pathway to the tomb!"

J. MONTGOMERY.

"Here is the mother with her sons and daughters:
The barren wife, the long demurring maid,
Whose lonely unappropriated sweets
Smiled like yon knot of cowslips on the cliff,
Not to be come at by the willing hand:
The sober widow, and the young green virgin,`
Cropped like a rose before 'tis fully blown

Or half its worth disclosed.-BLAIR'S GRAVE.

In treating of "Floral Ceremonies," we have purposely avoided any allusion to those hallowed rites, with which people of all ages and countries, have delighted to honour the memory of departed worth and beauty; this is a subject, or rather a branch of a subject, which demands a chapter to itself. We can promise our readers that it will comprise passages and extracts as rich in poetic beauty, as any of the preceding chapters, and we trust that it will not prove the less acceptable, or pleasing, from the melancholy tenor of those extracts; and of the observations which we may find it necessary to make on them. 66 'Pleasant," says the Gaelic bard,

"is the joy of grief! it is like the shower of spring, when it softens the branch of the oak, and the young leaf lifts its green head." In the perusal of many, indeed, we believe most, of the poems which follow, the real mourner may, without indulging a morbid spirit of repining, find comfort and consolation; and for those yet unvisited by sorrow-the gay and the thoughtless -it is good to be sometimes reminded of Death, and the Grave; not to fill them with gloomy thoughts and forebodings, but to lead them to the contemplation of higher and more lasting enjoyments than this life affords. A memento mori is not necessarily sad and forbidding, nor is the dirge-note always a fearful sound, for to the mind rightly trained and constituted, they speak of a blissful hereafter, and a glorified existence, for which this is but a state of preparation. Knowing and feeling this, we may stand in the church-yard without awe or dread, and looking through Death's open portals, into the regions of everlasting happiness beyond, exclaim :

"The first tabernacle to HoPE we will build,

And look for the sleepers around us to rise;
The second to FAITH, which ensures it fulfilled;
And the third to the LAMB of the great SACRIFICE,

Who bequeathed us them both when He rose to the skies."

HERBERT KNOWLES.

Let us ever remember, with EPHON, that "the flower sheds the same fragrance if it blooms in Eden or on a grave, and the same song which awakes the lark at morn may lull the dying at evening to repose;" and also that,

"The sweetest flower in pleasure's path

Will bloom on sorrow's grave."-JOHN CLARTM