I'd be a butterfly, born in a bower,
Where roses and lilies and violets meet. [ Thomas Haynes Bayly ]
Lilies are whitest in a blackamoor's hand. [ Proverb ]
Oh! roses and lilies are fair to see;
But the wild bluebell is the flower for me. [ Louisa A. Meredith ]
The lilies faintly to the roses yield.
As on thy lovely cheek, they struggling vie. [ Hoffman ]
Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim.
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes.
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength - a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one! [ William Shakespeare ]
The rose is fragrant, but it fades in time:
The violet sweet, but quickly past the prime:
White lilies hang their heads, and soon decay,
And white snow in minutes melts away. [ Dryden ]
God's plans like lilies pure and white unfold;
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart;
Time will reveal the calyxes of gold. [ Mary R. Smith ]
The slender acacia would not shake
One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me;
The lilies and roses were all awake.
They sighed for the dawn and thee. [ Tennyson ]
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die;
But if that flower with base infection meet.
The basest weed outbraves its dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. [ William Shakespeare ]
The milk-white lilies that lean from the fragrant hedge. [ Alice Cary ]
With fragrant breath the lilies woo me now, and softly speaks the sweet-voiced mignonette. [ Julia C. R. Dorr ]
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for instance. [ Ruskin ]
And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin. [ Bible ]
Our humble lilies of the valley and our field sparrows are wise enough to tell us of Nature's overruling care, that makes happiness possible. [ Newell Dwight Hillis ]
If flowers have souls,
said Undine, the bees, whose nurses they are, must seem to them darling children at the breast. I once fancied a paradise for the spirits of departed flowers.
They go,
answered I, not into paradise, but into a middle state; the souls of lilies enter into maidens' foreheads, those of hyacinths and forget-me-nots dwell in their eyes, and those of roses in their lips.
[ Richter ]