Flora's Lexicon/Butter-cup

by Catharine Harbeson Waterman

UTTER-CUP. Ranunculus Æris. Class 13, Polyandria. Order: Polygynia. This plant contains many virulent qualities, which are said to affect cattle, especially sheep, and particularly the root, which has the property of inflaming and blistering the skin. Shakspeare mentions it as the cuckoo-flower in King Lear,—

Nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnell, and all the wild weeds.

And Clare, the Northamptonshire poet, alludes to its ungrateful qualities in some lines on the “Eternity of Nature:” detailing his morning’s walk, he says,

I wander out and rhyme;
What hour the dewy morning’s infancy
Hangs on each blade of grass and every tree,
And sprents the red thighs of the humble bee,
Who ’gins betimes unwearied minstrelsy;
Who breakfasts, dines, and most divinely sups,
With every flower save golden buttercups,—
On whose proud bosoms he will never go,
But passes by with scarcely ‘how do ye do,’
Since in their showy, shining, gaudy cells,
Haply the summer’s honey never dwells.

INGRATITUDE.

I served thee fifteen hard campaigns,
And pitch’d thy standards in these foreign fields;
By me thy greatness grew; thy years grew with it;
But thy ingratitude outgrew them both.

Dryden

He that’s ungrateful, has no guilt but one;
All other crimes may pass for virtues in him.

Young

He that doth public good for multitudes,
Finds few are truly grateful.

Marston