Language of Flowers

*An Asphodel*	*Time's Garden*
O dear sweet rosy unattainable desire . . .how sad, no way to change the mad cultivated asphodel, the visible reality. . . and skin's appalling petals--how inspired to be so lying in the living room drunk naked and dreaming, in the absence of electricity . . . over and over eating the low root of the asphodel, gray fate . . . rolling in generation on the flowery couch as on a bank in Arden-- my only rose tonite's the treat of my own nudity.	Years are the seedlings which we careless sow In Time's bare garden. Dead they seem to be Dead years! We sigh and cover them with mould, But though the vagrant wind blow hot, blow cold, No hint of life beneath the dust we see; Then comes the magic hour when we are old, And lo! they stir and blossom wondrously. Strange spectral blooms in spectral plots aglow! Here a great rose and here a ragged tare; And here pale, scentless blossoms without name, Robbed to enrich this poppy formed of flame; Here springs some heartsease, scattered unaware; Here, hawthorn-bloom to show the way Love came; Here, asphodel, to image Love's despair! When I am old and master of the spell To raise these garden ghosts of memory, My feet will turn aside from common ways, Where common flowers mark the common days, To one green plot; and there I know will be Fairest of all (O perfect beyond praise!) The year you gave, beloved, your rosemary.
Allan Ginsberg	Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
A Shropshire Lad XLVI Bring, in this timeless grave to throw	Dirge
Bring, in this timeless grave to throw No cypress, sombre on the snow; Snap not from the bitter yew His leaves that live December through; Break no rosemary, bright with rime And sparkling to the cruel crime; Nor plod the winter land to look For willows in the icy brook To cast them leafless round him: bring To spray that ever buds in spring. But if the Christmas field has kept Awns the last gleaner overstept, Or shrivelled flax, whose flower is blue A single season, never two; Or if one haulm whose year is o’er Shivers on the upland frore, -Oh, bring from hill and stream and plain Whatever will not flower again, To give him comfort: he and those Shall bide eternal bedfellows Where low upon the couch he lies Whence he never shall arise.	COME away, come away, death, And in sad cypres let me be laid; Fly away, fly away, breath; I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, O prepare it! My part of death, no one so true Did share it. Not a flower, not a flower sweet, On my black coffin let there be strown; Not a friend, not a friend greet My poor corse, where my bones shall be thrown: A thousand thousand sighs to save, Lay me, O, where Sad true lover never find my grave To weep there!
A.E. Housman	William Shakespeare

Death Cypress; Yew; Black Rose	"mournful lean Despair Brings me yew to deck my grave", William Blake, Song "the dismal yew", John Fletcher, Aspatia's Song
Death preferable to loss of innocence, Death before loss of innocence White Rose (dried)
Affection beyond the grave Locust Tree
Dead hope Convolvulus Major
A deadly foe is near Monkshood/Monk's-hood	*A slender, erect, poisonous perennial herb (Aconitum napellus)*
Mourning Cypress; Purple Scabious; Weeping Willow	"No Roman funeral was complete without the cypress. This is, of course, the stiletto-like Italian tree, not the unruly conifers of the Western United States and elsewhere. Cypress branches adorned the vestibule while the body lay in state. Mourners carried its branches as a sign of respect. And the bodies of the great were laid upon cypress branches before interment." Cemetery Plants "Of unknown origin ... is Poor Lorella, who was killed by her lover, and lies down under the weeping willow: Down on her knees before him She pleaded for her life; But deep into her bosom He plunged the fatal knife. This is known also as The Weeping Willow" 'Especially in the Romantic period there were many depictions of the weeping willow.' Wordsworth Dictionary of Symbolism
Regrets beyond the grave, Remembered beyond the tomb Asphodel	*My regrets follow you to the grave, Collier's Cyclopedia* Asphodel, by the poets made an immortal flower, and said to cover the Elysian meads. (Cf. Homer Odyssey XI. 539) OED 1634 MILTON Comus 838 To embathe In nectared lavers strewed with asphodel. 1658 SIR T. BROWNE Hydriot. 37 The dead are made to eat Asphodels about the Elysian meadows. 1713 POPE St. Cecilia's Day 74 Happy souls who dwell In yellow meads of asphodel Or amaranthine bowers. a1842 TENNYSON Lotos-Eaters 170 Others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. 1858 LONGFELLOW Poems 90 He who wore the crown of asphodels, Descending, at my door began to knock. HOMER, Odyssey, XXIV, 1-18 Past the streams of Oceanus they went, past the rock Leucus, past the gates of the sun and the land of dreams, and quickly came to the mead of the asphodel, where the spirits dwell, phantoms of men who have done with toils.
Remembrance Rosemary; Pheasant's Eye	*"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance" - Hamlet, Act IV Scene V, Shakespeare* "For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep Seeming and savour all the winter long: Grace and remembrance be to you both" - The Winter's Tale, Act IV Scene III, Shakespeare Rosemary used for wreaths and funeral flowers, [ultimately from Lat.,=dew of the sea], widely cultivated evergreen and shrubby perennial (Rosmarinus officinalis) of the family Labiatae (mint family), fairly hardy and native to the Mediterranean region. It has small light-blue flowers. The aromatic leaves, whitish beneath, are used for seasoning, and the oil is used in perfume and medicine. From ancient times rosemary has been regarded as a token of constancy and remembrance. There is a prostrate variety. Rosemary is classified in the division Magnoliophyta, class Magnoliopsida, order Lamiales, family Labiatae. “He from his lass him lavender hath sent, Showing his love, and doth requital crave, Him rosemary his sweetheart, whose intent Is that he should her in remembrance have.” Drayton. Eclogue, ix.
Deadly lady Belladonna	*Belladonna, the beautiful lady, deadly nightshade.* "Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations" - The Waste Land, TS Eliot
You will be my death Hemlock	"a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk", John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale ...The grass, forerunner of life, has gone, But plants that spring in ruins and shards Attend until your dream is done: I have seen hemlock in your yards. Gordon Bottomley, To Ironfounders and Others
I shall die tomorrow. Gum Cistus
*Widowhood, Mourning Bride* Sweet Scabious