When once, as Fame reports, the Queen of Love In Ida's valley raised a Myrtle grove, Young wanton Cupids danced a summer's night Round the sweet place by Cynthia's silver light. Venus this charming green alone prefers, And this of all the verdant kind is hers: Hence the bride's brow with Myrtle wreath is graced, Hence in Elysian Fields are myrtles said To favor lovers with their friendly shade, There Phædra, Procris (ancient poets feign) And Eriphyle still of love complain Whose unextinguished flames e'en after death remain. The Romans always displayed myrtle lavishly at weddings, feasts, and on all days celebrating victories. With the Hebrews the myrtle was the symbol of peace; and among many Oriental races there is a tradition that Adam brought a slip of myrtle from the Garden of Eden because he considered it the choicest of fragrant flowers. The myrtle was early loved in England. In one of the old Roxburgh Ballads of the Fifteenth Century a lover presses his suit by promising: And I will make the beds of Roses, And a thousand fragrant posies; A cap of flowers and a kirtle Embroidered with leaves of myrtle. In those days and long afterward there was a saying that "if you want to be sure of your myrtle taking root, then you must spread out your dress grandly and look proud" when you are planting your slip. We can imagine one of the Fifteenth Century ladies spreading her voluminous and flowing robes with majestic grace and holding her head adorned with the tall pointed cap, or _hennin_, with veil fluttering from its peak as she planted the little flower in her tiny walled Garden of Delight! There is a saying, too, that one must never pass a sweet myrtle bush without picking a spray. The flowering myrtle is considered the luckiest of all plants to have in the window, but it must be watered every day. Autumn "HERBS OF GRACE" AND "DRAMS OF POISON" I _Rosemary and Rue_ ROSEMARY (_Rosmarinus officinalis_). Rosemary "delights in sea-spray," whence its name. "The cheerful Rosemary," as Spenser calls it, was in high favor in Shakespeare's day. The plant was not only allowed a corner in the kitchen-garden; but it was trained over arbors and allowed to run over the mounds and banks pretty much at its own sweet will. "As for Rosemarie," said Sir Thomas More, "I let it run all over my garden walls, not only because my bees love it, but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance, and, therefore, to friendship; whence a spray of it hath a dumb language that maketh it the chosen emblem at our funeral-wakes and in our burial-grounds." [Illustration: "A CURIOUS-KNOTTED GARDEN," VREDEMAN DE VRIES] [Illustration: GARDEN WITH ARBORS, VREDEMAN DE VRIES]