“But, absolutely free, His happy time he spends the works of God to see, In those so sundry herbs which there in plenty grow, Whose sundry strange effects he only seeks to know; And in a little maund, being made of Osiers small, Which serveth him to do full many a thing withal, He very choicely sorts his simples, got abroad; Here finds he on an Oak rheum-purging Polypode; And in some open place that to the sun doth lie, He Fumitory gets, and Eyebright for the eye; The Yarrow wherewithal he stays the wound-made gore, The healing Tutsan then, and Plantaine for a sore; And hard by them, again, he holy Vervain finds, Which he about his head that hath the megrim binds; The wonder-working Dill he gets not far from these, Which curious women use in many a nice disease; For them that are with Newts, or Snakes, or Adders stung He seeketh out a herb, that is called Adder’s-tongue; As Nature it ordain’d its own like hurt to cure, And sportive did herself to niceties inure. Valerian then he crops, and purposely doth stamp To apply unto the place that’s haled with the cramp; The Chickweed cures the heat that in the face doth rise, For physic some again he inwardly applies; For comforting the spleen and liver, gets for juice Pale Horehound, which he holds of most especial use. And for the labouring wretch that’s troubled with a cough, Or stopping of the breath by phlegm that’s hard and tough, Campana here he crops, approved wondrous good; Or Comfrey unto him that’s bruised, spitting blood; And for the falling ill by Five-leafe doth restore, And melancholy cures by sovereign Hellebore: Of these most helpful herbs yet tell we but a few To those unnumbered sort of simples here that grew, What justly to set down even Dodon short doth fall, Nor skilful Gerarde yet shall ever find them all.” [Tailpiece] [Headpiece] CHAPTER XIV. Plants and the Planets. Two centuries ago there existed a very general belief that every plant was under the direct influence of a particular Planet, and therefore that all the details connected with its cultivation and utilisation were to be conducted with a strict regard to this supposition. Aubrey has recorded his opinion, that if a plant “be not gathered according to the rules of astrology, it hath little or no virtue in it;” and the Jesuit Rapin, in his Latin poem on ‘Gardens,’ says, with respect to flowers--