"And if I her like ought on earth might read I would her liken to a crowne of Lillies, Upon a virgin brydes adorned head, With Roses dight and Goolds and Daffodillies." _Colin Clout._ But it was its other quality of opening or shutting its flowers at the sun's bidding that made the Marigold such a favourite with the old writers, especially those who wrote on religious emblems. It was to them the emblem of constancy in affection,[157:2] and sympathy in joy and sorrow, though it was also the emblem of the fawning courtier, who can only shine when everything is bright. As the emblem of constancy, it was to the old writers what the Sunflower was to Moore-- "The Sunflower turns on her god when he sets The same look which she did when he rose." It was the Heliotrope or Solsequium or Turnesol of our forefathers, and is the flower often alluded to under that name.[158:1] "All yellow flowers," says St. Francis de Sales, "and, above all, those that the Greeks call Heliotrope, and we call Sunflower, not only rejoice at the sight of the sun, but follow with loving fidelity the attraction of its rays, gazing at the sun, and turning towards it from its rising to its setting" ("Divine Love," Mulholland's translation). Of this higher and more religious use of the emblematic flower there are frequent examples. I will only give one from G. Withers, a contemporary of Shakespeare's later life-- "When with a serious musing I behold The grateful and obsequious Marigold, How duly every morning she displays Her open breast when Phœbus spreads his rays; How she observes him in his daily walk, Still bending towards him her small slender stalk; How when he down declines she droops and mourns, Bedewed, as 'twere, with tears till he returns; And how she veils her flowers when he is gone. When this I meditate, methinks the flowers Have spirits far more generous than ours, And give us fair examples to despise The servile fawnings and idolatries Wherewith we court these earthly things below, Which merit not the service we bestow." From the time of Withers the poets treated the Marigold very much as the gardeners did--they passed it by altogether as beneath their notice. FOOTNOTES: [157:1] "That werud of yolo Guldes a garland." _The Knightes Tale._ [157:2] "You the Sun to her must play, She to you the Marigold, To none but you her leaves unfold." MIDDLETON AND ROWLEY, _The Spanish Gipsy_. See also Thynne's "Emblems," No. 18; and Cutwode's "Caltha Poetarum," 1599, st. 18, 19. [158:1] "Solsequium vel heliotropium; Solsece vel sigel-hwerfe" (_i.e._, sun-seeker or sun-turner).--ÆLFRIC'S _Vocabulary_. "Marigolde; solsequium, sponsa solis."--_Catholicon Anglicum._