its dew glittering heavy, globed in their glossy cups, may be loved
better than the gray nettles of the ash heap, under gray sky, unveined by
vermilion or by gold.

83. The next great group, of the asphodels, divides itself also into two
principal families: one, in which the flowers are like stars, and
clustered characteristically in balls, though opening sometimes into
looser heads; and the other, in which the flowers are in long bells,
opening suddenly at the lips, and clustered in spires on a long stem, or
drooping from it, when bent by their weight.

The star-group, of the squills, garlics, and onions, has always caused me
great wonder. I cannot understand why its beauty, and serviceableness,
should have been associated with the rank scent which has been really
among the most powerful means of degrading peasant life, and separating
it from that of the higher classes.

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.