Thomson again says of spring,

"While from his ardent look, the burning spring

Averts her blushful look."

And Burns, in his Elegy on Thomson, thus speaks of spring :

"While virgin Spring, by Eden's flood

Unfolds her tender mantle green,

Or pranks the sod, in frolic mood,

Or tunes Æolian strains between."

And on another occasion, Burns says,

"Now rosy May comes in with flowers,

To deck her gay, green-spreading bowers."

And every poet, when he wishes to present spring in its highest beauty, clothes it in the charms of woman. Spenser says,

"Then came fair May, the fairest maid on ground,

Deck'd all with dainties of her season's pride,

And throwing flowers out of her lap around."

And the moon, as she walks forth in her mild beauty, is always described by poets as a woman. Shakspeare says,

"Where Phoebe doth behold

Her silver visage in the wat'ry glass,

Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass."

And Milton says,

"till the moon,

Rising in clouded majesty, at length,

unveil'd her peerless light,

And o'er the world her silver mantle threw."

And he says again,

"To behold the wandering moon,
Riding near her highest noon,

Like one that has been led astray,

Through the heaven's wide pathless way.

And oft as if her head she bow'd,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud."

And Burns, speaking of the moon, says,

"Now Phoebe in her midnight reign,

Dark muffled, view'd the dewy plain."

And when we look at the descriptions by poets of the flowers that smile so modestly amidst the glories of nature, we find them weaving around them associations borrowed from woman. Prior thus speaks of the cowslip:—

"The cowslip smiles, in brighter yellow drest,

Than that which veils the nubile virgin's breast."

Read Burns's Address to a Mountain Daisy, and see how the associations with woman cluster in the sentiments:—

"Wee, modest crimson-tipped flow'r,

Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure

But now the share uptears thy bed,

And low thou lies!"

"Such is the fate of artless maid,
Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betray'd,

And guiless trust,

Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid,
Low i' the dust.

Take out of this poem the sentiments and associations of woman that are interwoven in it, and you take away all its beauty. And how beautifully are the associations between flowers and woman exemplified in this song by Burns.

"Adown winding Nith, I did wander,

To mark the sweet flowers as they spring;
Adown winding Nith I did wander,

Of Phillis to muse and to sing.

The daisy amus'd my fond fancy,
So artless, so simple, so wild;
Thou emblem, said I, o' my Phillis,
For she is simplicity's child.

The rose-bud's the blush o' my charmer,
Her sweet balmy lip when 'tis prest:

How fair and how pure is the lily,

But fairer and purer her breast!

Yon knot of gay flowers in the arbor,
They ne'er wi' my Phillis can vie:
Her breath is the breath o' the woodbine,
Its dewdrop o' diamond, her eye.

Her voice is the song of the morning,

That wakes thro' the green-spreading grove,

When Phoebus peeps over the mountains,
On music, and pleasure, and love.

But beauty, how frail and how fleeting,
The bloom of a fine summer's day!
While worth, in the mind o' my Phillis,
Will flourish without a decay."

But why need I multiply examples, when the reader's memory can furnish him with a thousand instances where poets have personified beautiful objects as woman? It has been done in all ages, all countries, and in all literatures. Because the same analogies on which the personifications are founded, have been visible to the eye of the poet in all ages, and the mind, by the necessary laws of association, clothes the objects in the beauty of woman.

But it is not only in the actual personifications, that the association of material objects with the beauty of woman is indicated. The whole language of poetry indicates the same fact. The golden thread of woman's beauty is interwoven through all its richest diction. The choicest epithets are instinct with the lovely characteristics of her soul. Her modesty, her innocence, her blushes of purity, her delicacy of sentiment, and her other charms, all breathe in the epithets applied to the flowers of the field. The modest violet, the innocent lily, the blushing rose, the delicate myrtle, are all inspired by woman's winning sentiments. And even the rich gems of diamond, and topaz, and jasper, and pearl, that hang in costly lustre around her person, derive

their beauty from her charms, as the epithets applied to their qualities, clearly show. Indeed, look where we may, throughout that panoramic view of nature's beauties which poetry presents, and we see a halo of woman's beauty hanging around them all, giving to them their power of sympathy over the human heart. The epithets applied to them are the expression of what the poet's heart feels; and what he feels, are the sentiments which the peculiar graces of woman are specially designed to awaken. There is a mysterious analogy, as I have already shown, between these material objects and the qualities of woman; and they are therefore bound together in the linked sweetness of association. It is in fact, upon these delicate analogies between animate and inanimate things, between the beautiful things of the material world, and the person and soul of woman, that those winning similes are founded, which give such ravishing power to poetry. Call to mind, for instance, the lines addressed by Burns to Miss Cruikshank :