LORE OF THE POPPY

Southland Times, Issue 19461, 28 January 1925, Page 9

LORE OF THE POPPY

THE FLOWER IN LEGEND AND LITERATURE. In folk lore and literature the poppy has always symbolised forgetting, but in our time it has become a token of remembrance. On Armistice Day we wear it for a warning “lest we forget” those above whose graves blooms this flower of forgetfulness. Among the Greeks (says a writer in John o’ London’s Weekly) the poppy was sacred to Artemis and Aphrodite, but especially was it an attribute of Demeter— Mother Earth —whom the Romans named Ceres. The legend goes that Pluto fell in love with Persephone (the Roman Proserpine), Demeter’s daughter. As the maiden was gathering flowers on the slopes of Etna, a chasm gaped suddenly beneath her feet, and she was abducted by Pluto to be queen of his infernal realm. Demeter refused to return to Olympus or to produce the fruits of the earth till her daughter should be restored to her. It was finally agreed that Persephone should spend onethird of each year in Hades with her lord and two-thirds on Olympus with her mother It was to assuage her anguish at the loss of her child that Demeter created the poppy: For eating of the seeds they sleep procured, And so beguiled those griefs she long endured. SWINBURNE’S LINES.

As queen of the nether world Persephone also had a claim to the poppy, the flower of insensibility. In a magnificent passage Swinburne describes her garden, stocked with poppies whose buds yield a vintage of oblivion for the dead: No growth of moor or coppice, No heather-flower or vine. But bloomless buds of poppies, Green grapes of Proserpine, Pale beds of blowing rushes Where no leaf blooms or blushes Save this whereout she crushes For dead men deadly wine. EMBLEM OF SLEEP.

Despite its gaudy aspect and air of gay insouciance, the poppy has *remained through the centuries the emblem of rest and of the mystery enshrouding both rest in sleep and rest in death. Horace Smith, the parodist, forsaking parodies, caught something of this contrast between the poppy’s flaunting look and solemn symbolism :

O, poppy flower! Thou are the Croesus of the field—its king— A mystic power, With emblems deep, and secret blessings fraught, And potent properties that baffle thought.

In the language of flowers the poppy speaks of sleep and consolation; by dis playing it to keep fresh the memory of those who sleep in Flanders’ fields we have given a new 7 meaning and a greater poignancy to its message.