Poetry, in the most comprehensive application of the term, I take to be the flower of any kind of experience, rooted in truth, and issuing forth into beauty.

-Hunt, (James Henry) Leigh
  The Story of Rimini, preface to rev edn.

For Love's sake, kiss me once again, I long, and should not beg in vain, Here's none to spy, or see; Why do you doubt, or stay? I'll taste as lightly as the Bee, That doth but touch his flower, and flies away. Once more, and (faith) I will be gone: Can he that loves, ask less than one?

-Jonson, Ben
The Underwood,'A Celebration of Charis', no.7 (published1640).

Are simple women only fit To dress, to darn, to flower or knit, To mind the distaff, or the spit? Why are the needle and the pen Thought incompatible by men? 507

-Lewis, Esther married name  Clark
  'A Mirror for Detractors', l.146^50.

   'What tydynges at Camelot?'seyde that on knyght.'By my hede, there have I been and aspied the courte of kynge Arthure, and there ys such a felyshyp that they may never be brokyn, and well-nyghe all the world holdith with Arthure, for there ys the floure of chevalry.'

-Malory, SirThomas   d.1471
c.1470  Morte d'Arthur, bk.3, ch.14.

Is it not possible that the rage for confession, autobiography, especially for memories of earliest childhood, is explained by our persistent yet mysterious belief in a self which is continuous and permanent; which, untouched by all we acquire and all we shed, pushes a green spear through the dead leaves and throughthemould, thrusts a scaled bud through years of darkness until, one day, the light discovers it and shakes the flower free andöwe are aliveöwe are flowering for our moment upon the earth? This is the moment which after all, we live foröthe moment of direct feeling when we are most ourselves and least personal.

-Beauchamp
   Journal entry,  Apr.

And now, when I have summed up all my store, Thinking (so I myself deceive) So rich a chaplet thence to weave As never yet the King of Glory wore, Alas! I find the serpent old, That, twining in his speckled breast, About the flowers disguised does fold With wreaths of fame and interest.

-Marvell, Andrew
c.1650^1652  'The Coronet' (published1681).

La fleur que tu m'avais jete¤  e Here is the flower that you threw me

-Meilhac, Henri
  Carmen, act 2,'Flower Song' (DonJose¤ ) .

Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale gessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well attir'd woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears: Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.

-Milton,John
  Lycidas, l.142^51. rathe = early.

Oh! ever thus, from childhood's hour, I've seen my fondest hopes decay; I never loved a tree or flower, But 'twas the first to fade away. I never nursed a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well, And love me, it was sure to die!

-Moore,Thomas
  Lallah Rookh,'The Fire Worshippers'.

Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.

-Mumford, Lewis
Collected in Quote Magazine, 8 Oct1961.

Beauty is but a flower Which wrinkles will devour; Brightness falls from the air; Queens have died young and fair; Dust hath close'  d Helen's eye. I am sick, I must die. Lord, have mercy on us!

-Nashe,Thomas
  'A Litany in Time of Plague'.

Nobody sees a floweröreallyöit is so smallöwe haven't timeöand to see takes time like to have a friend takes time† So I said to myself öI'll paint what I seeöwhat the flower is to me, but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking timeto look at itöIwill make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.

-O'Keeffe, Georgia
Quoted in Goodrich and Bry Georgia O'Keeffe (1970).

The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably inthe circuits of a digital computeror thegears of a cycle transmission ashe does at thetop of a mountainor in the petals of a flower.

-Pirsig, Robert M(aynard)
  Zen and theArt of Motorcycle Maintenance, pt.1, ch.1.

Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade, Trees where you sit, shall crowd into a shade: Where'er you tread, the blushing flowers shall rise, And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.

-Pope, Alexander
  Pastorals,'Summer', l.73^6.

Then washed in the brightness of this vision, I saw how in its radiance would grow and be nourished and suddenly burst into terrible and splendid bloom the blood-red flower of revolution.

-Randall, Dudley
  Cities Burning,'Roses and Revolutions'.

   To know that light falls and fills, often without our knowing, As an opaque vase fills to the brim from quick pouring, Fills and trembles at the edge yet does not flow over, Still holding and feeding the stem of the contained flower.

-Rogers,Will
  The Lost Son,'The Shape of Fire'.

Ah! County Guy, the hour is nigh, The sun has left the lea, The orange flower perfumes the bower, The breeze is on the sea.

-Scott, Sir Walter
  Quentin Durward, ch.4.

The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen among us,övisiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty'.

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, The sweetest flower for scent that blows.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  'The Sensitive Plant', pt.1, l.37^8.

The vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language to another the creations of a poet. 786 The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
A Defence of Poetry.