RADIANCES

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 23, 27 January 1923, Page 12

RADIANCES

THE LIGHT THAT COMES FROM FLOWERS. '

"Do you love butter?" say the children. They," hold a- buttercup under your chin, and by the yellow light that rises up from it- and paints your throat they know that you love butter.

Does every one know that the air about a yellow flower is dyed yellow, that the yellow beams shoot upward? asks a writer in the "Christian Science Monitor." That a golden cloud hovers over a summer field? A cloud indeed ! A fire rather—a summer fire that delights the eye.

- It was the children that discovered that the buttercup throws upward"" its tiny fountain of golden light. The rest of us- are hardly ,near enough to v/hat one may call the small immensities to have realised this great little thing. It is the source of our love for flowers, this jetting forth of radiance. The light that falls upon them is cast back into the air, dyed to their own several colours. The flowery garden of June is tinted in a thousand many-coloured aureoles. Quite three-foot depth of air- all round a bush of broom in May is dyed golden. Put your hand ~ within the circle, you will see that it is so. Lean your face within it, it will be all painted and lit up--with a-golden glory. Hold your flat hand a foot above, a crimson rose tree in full bloom, and it will be dyed rose colour. . This summer I. saw an enormous crimson rose lolling on a grey stone balustrade in the sun, • • casting forth .the perfume and cranson light from its cupped leaves. I saw a face that stooped to that rose bathed in that crimson glow.

We should be more grateful to the flowers did we realise this gift of fheirs; they are the lamps of the daytime, unspeakably bright. The gardener's work is to light up many-coloured lamps for the joy of the folk : that pass *by, as well as for his own. That they do give delight is certain.