field herbage; but I must say briefly here that the great sign, to the
Greeks, of the coming of spring in the pastures, was not, as with us, in
the primrose, but in the various flowers of the asphodel tribe (of which
I will give you some separate account presently); therefore it is that
the earth answers with crocus flame to the cloud on Ida; and the power
of Athena in eternal life is written by the light of the asphodel on the
Elysian fields.

But further, Athena is the air, not only to the lilies of the field, but
to the leaves of the forest. We saw before the reason why Hermes is said
to be the son of Maia, the eldest of the sister stars of spring. Those
stars are called not only Pleiades, but Vergiliæ, from a word mingling
the ideas of the turning or returning of springtime with the outpouring
of rain. The mother of Vergil bearing the name of Maia, Vergil himself
received his name from the seven stars; and he, forming first the mind of
Dante, and through him that of Chaucer (besides whatever special minor
influence came from the Pastorals and Georgics) became the fountainhead
of all the best literary power connected with the love of vegetative
nature among civilized races of men. Take the fact for what it is worth;
still it is a strange seal of coincidence, in word and in reality, upon
the Greek dream of the power over human life, and its purest thoughts, in
the stars of spring. But the first syllable of the name of Vergil has
relation also to another group of words, of which the English ones,
virtue and virgin, bring down the force to modern days. It is a group
containing mainly the idea of "spring," or increase of life in
vegetation--the rising of the new branch of the tree out of the bud, and
of the new leaf out of the ground. It involves, secondarily, the idea
of greenness and of strength, but, primarily, that of living increase of
a new rod from a stock, stem, or root ("There shall come forth a rod out
of the stem of Jesse"); and chiefly the stem of certain plants--either of