Come, view the winter’s beauteous scene,
On this cold frosty morn,
The snowy mantle spread, to screen
​ The earth till Spring’s return.

The hoary frost upon the trees,
That hides their faded brown,
​And makes a sight the eye to please,
Like soft white eider-down.

And snowy garlands, here and there,
Festoon the things with such
A refined, graceful, tender care,
​ Like mother nature’s touch. 

And back of all this wintry gleam,
Th'e sapphire of the sky
Shines where the sun’s bright glorious beam
​ Will meet the waiting eye. 

And when he spreads his dazzling light,
The various shades will glow,
In the prismatic colors bright,
​As in the arched rainbow.

We’re glad there is such beauty left,
To decorate the part
Of time that would seem all bereft
​Of things to cheer the heart.
                                                  ~ Mrs. Alden Chamberlin

   "Who would believe, that a most interesting and edifying book, and that, too, a romance, could be written, the scene of which should be laid in a dungeon-yard, and the main character should be a simple flower, that finds its way up between the flagstones?"
                                                                                                             ~The Christian Examiner and General Review, 1839

X. B. Saintine

"Chance became his God, nothingness his hope!" 

"How had that tender, delicate plantlet, so fragile that a touch would destroy it, managed to lift up, divide and cast aside that soil baked and hardened by the sun, trodden down by himself, and almost cemented to the two fragments of stone between which it was confined?"

"These things you would have known long since, Sir Count, if, stooping from the abstract regions of human knowledge, you had ever deigned to lower your gaze to the simple, humble works of God".

Picciola, painted by Robert Braithwaite Martineau (1853)

"A man who thus subjects his thoughts to a blade of grass", said he, "may make a very good botanist, but no conspirator". 

"Of what use to the flowers are their sweet odors? Do they themselves enjoy them?
 No.
Are they meant for the pleasure of animals?
Did you ever see a sheep or a dog pause before a rose to inhale its perfume?
Then it was for man alone that the rich treasures are meant. Wherefore?
That they may be loved, perhaps."

​"We would have flowers in every home, for their sunny light, for their cheerful teachings, for their insensibly ennobling influence."

​"If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere."
                                                                       ~Van Gogh

I'm under the pear tree, sitting all alone ;
My garden is gay with asters, pinks and phlox,
And many a posy for others' pleasure sown ;
But here, for myself, I have planted four o'clocks.
​
"Old fashioned," you say, and cannot my choice approve;
Rarer posies your fancy craves, no doubt;
But after all, it isn't the flowers we love,
But the dear old times that they make us think about.

It's a way they have of making us love them so,
We care not long how fragrant or gay they may be,
But deep in our hearts they strike their roots and grow
Tangled and twined with various memory.
                                                                       ~Harriet Emma George