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LETTER XXVI.
From childhood, I have had a most absorbing passion
for flowers. What unheard of quantities of moss and violets
have I trailed from their shady birthplace, to some little
nook, which fate allowed me, for the time being, to call my
home! And then, how I have pitied the poor things, and
feared they would not be so happy, as if I had left them
alone. Yet flowers ever seemed to thrive with me, as if
they knew I loved them. Perchance they did; for invisible
radii, inaudible language, go forth from the souls of
all things. Nature ever sees and hears it; as man would,
were it not for his self-listening.
The flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in
written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels,
loved by all men for the beauty of the character, though
few can decypher even fragments of their meaning. Minerals,
flowers, and birds, among a thousand other tri-une
ideas, ever speak to me of the Past, the Present, and the
Future. The Past, like minerals, with their fixed forms of
gorgeous but unchanging beauty; the Present, like flowers,
growing and ever changing—bud, blossom, and seed-vessel
—seed, bud, and blossom, in endless progression; the
Future, like birds, with winged aspirations, and a voice
that sings into the clouds. Not separate are past, present,
and future; but one evolved from the other, like the continuous,
ever-rising line of the spiral: and not separate
are minerals, vegetables, and animals. The same soul
pervades them all; they are but higher and higher types
other. Strike away one curve in the great growth of the
universe, and the stars themselves would fall. Some
glimpses of these arcana were revealed to the ancients;
hence the spiral line occurs frequently among the sacred
and mysterious emblems in their temples.
There is an astronomical theory that this earth, by a succession
of spiral movements, is changing its position, until
its poles will be brought into harmonious relation with the
poles of the heavens; then sunshine will equally overspread
the globe, and Spring become perpetual. I know
not whether this theory be correct; but I think it is—for
reasons not at all allied with astronomical knowledge. If
the millenium, so long prophesied, ever comes, if the lion
and the lamb ever lie down together within the souls of
men, the outward world must likewise come into divine order,
and the poles of the earth will harmonize with the poles
of the heavens; then shall universal Spring reign without,
the emblem and offspring of universal Peace within.
Everywhere in creation, we find visible types of these
ascending series. Everything is interlinked; each reaches
one hand upward and one downward, and touching palms,
each is interclasped with all above and all below. Plainly
is this truth written on the human soul, both in its individual
and universal progress; and therefore it is inscribed
on all material forms. But yesterday, I saw a plant called
the Crab Cactus, most singularly like the animal from which
it takes its name. My companion said it was “a strange
freak of Nature.” But I knew it was no freak. I saw
that the cactus and the crab meant the same thing—one on a
higher plane than the other. The singular plant was the
point where fish and vegetable touched palms; where
the ascending spiral circles passed into each other. There
is another Cactus that resembles the Sea Urchin; and another,
like the Star-fish. In fact, they all seem allied to
this embodies, sprung the fancy that fairies of the earth
sometimes formed strange union with merrows of the sea.
Every fancy, the wildest and the strangest, is somewhere
in the universe of God, a fact.
Another indication of interlinking series is found in the
zoophytes, the strangest of all links between the vegetable
and animal world; sometimes growing from a stem like a
plant, and radiating like a blossom, yet devouring insects
and digesting them, like an animal. Behold minerals in
their dark mines! how they strive toward efflorescence,
in picturesque imitation of foliage and tendrils, and roots,
and tangled vines. Such minerals are approaching the
circle of creation that lies above them, and from which they
receive their life; mineral and vegetable here touch palms,
and pass the electric fluid that pervades all life.
As the approach of different planes in existence is indicated
in forms, so is it in character and uses. Among
minerals, the magnet points ever to the North; so is there
a plant in the prairies, called by travellers the Polar Plant,
or Indian Compass, because the plane of its leaf points due
North and South, without other variation than the temporary
ruffling of the breeze.
If these secrets were clearly read, they might throw
much light on the science of healing, and perhaps reconcile
the clashing claims of mineral and vegetable medicines.
Doubtless every substance in Nature is an antidote
to some physical evil; owing to some spiritual cause, as
fixed as the laws of mathematics, but not as easily perceived.
The toad, when bitten by a spider, goes to the plantain
leaf, and is cured; the bird, when stung by the yellow
serpent, flies to the Guaco plant, and is healed. If we
knew what spiritual evil was represented by the spider's
poison, and what spiritual good by the plantain leaf, we
should probably see the mystery revealed. Good always
casteth out hatred, truth overcomes falsehood, and suspicion
cannot live before perfect frankness. Always and
everywhere is evil overcome with good; and because it is
so in the soul of man, it is and must be so in all the laws and
operations of Nature.
And uses, above and around, which man hath not yet regarded.
—There be virtues yet unknown in the wasted foliage of the elm,
In the sun-dried harebell of the downs, and the hyacinth drinking in the meadows;
In the sycamore's winged fruit, and the facet-cut cones of the cedar;
And the pansy and bright geranium live not alone for beauty,
Nor the waxen flower of the arbute, though it dieth in a day;
Nor the sculptured crest of the fir, unseen but by the stars;
And the meanest weed of the garden serveth unto many uses;
The salt tamarisk, and juicy flag, the freckled arum, and the daisy.
For every green herb, from the lotus to the darnel,
Is rich with delicate aids to help incurious man.”
“There is a final cause for the aromatic gum, that congealeth the moss around a rose;
A reason for each blade of grass, that reareth its small spire.
How knoweth discontented man what a train of ills might follow,
If the lowest menial of nature knew not her secret office?
In the perfect circle of creation not an atom could be spared,
From earth's magnetic zone to the bindweed round a hawthorn.
The briar and the palm have the wages of life, rendering secret service.”
I did not intend to write thus mystically; and I feel that
these are thoughts that should be spoken into your private
ear, not published to the world. To some few they may,
perchance, awaken a series of aspiring thoughts, till the
highest touch the golden harps of heaven, and fill the world
with celestial echoes. But to most they will seem an ambitious
attempt to write something, which is in fact nothing.
Be it so. I have spoken in a language which few understand,
and none can teach or learn. It writes itself in sunbeams,
it at a glance; but I learned it in no school. When I go
home and shut the door, it speaks to me, as if it were a
voice; but amid the multitude, the sound is hushed.
This which people call the real world, is not real to me;
all its sights seem to me shadows, all its sounds echoes. I
live at service in it, and sweep dead leaves out of paths,
and dust mirrors, and do errands, as I am bid; but glad am
I when work is done, to go home to rest. Then do I enter
a golden palace, with light let in only from above; and all
forms of beauty are on the walls, from the seraph before
God's throne, to the rose-tinted shell on the sea-shore.
I strove not to speak in mysticism; and lo, here I am, as
the Germans would say, “up in the blue” again. I know
not how it is, my thoughts to-day are like birds of paradise;
they have no feet, and will not light on earth.
I began to write about flowers with the utmost simplicity;
not meaning to twine of them a spiral ladder of garlands
from earth to heaven. The whole fabric arose from my
looking into the blue eyes of my German Forget-me-not,
which seems so much like a babe just wakening from a
pleasant dream. Then my heart blessed flowers from its
inmost depths. I thought of the beautiful story of the
Italian child laid on the bed of death with a wreath among
his golden ringlets, and a bouquet in his little cold hand.
They had decked him thus for the angels; but when they
went to place him in his coffin, to, the little cherub was
sitting up playing with the flowers.
How the universal heart of man blesses flowers! They
are wreathed round the cradle, the marriage altar, and the
tomb. The Persian in the far East, delights in their perfume,
and writes his love in nosegays; while the Indian
child of the far west clasps his hands with glee, as he
gathers the abundant blossoms—the illuminated scripture
of the prairies. The Cupid of the ancient Hindoos tipped
crown with us, a nation of yesterday. Flowers garlanded
the Grecian altar, and they hang in votive wreaths before
the Christian shrine.
All these are appropriate uses. Flowers should deck
the brow of the youthful bride, for they are in themselves a
lovely type of marriage. They should twine round the
tomb, for their perpetually renewed beauty is a symbol of
the resurrection. They should festoon the altar, for their
fragrance and their beauty ascend in perpetual worship before
the Most High.
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