Loving thoughts: Tulips and pansies, Hortus Botanicus, Leiden, The Netherlands
Overlooking the rainy airport runway of Rochester, NY, my mind turns to the riot of colors of the flowerbeds of the Hortus Botanicus at Leiden, The Netherlands. These beds of about 50 meters length and perhaps three wide, lead from the main gate to the sumptuous and well-labeled finery of the greenhouses.
Densely planted - as this photo shows - with pansies and tulips they are almost brighter than the sun, which shone only weakly when this shot was made.
Pansies and tulips: such a fortuitous combination. A sadly romantic love story from Persia associated with our tulip; and the pansy puts the mind to work (as indeed Shakespeare testifies through the mad words of Ophelia). Farhad de Stone-Cutter was madly in love with Shirin the Princess of Royal Blood. Their's was all the more a perfect and passionate love because it had to go unrequited, and both lost their lives violently; from their blood drops sprang up red tulips. The yellow ones of this picture are age-old symbols of hopeless, unrequited love.
The 'pansy' in English is thought to derive from the French 'penser' (=to think). In warmer weather the pansy droops its face-shaped flower as if in deep thought. Thus it has become a symbol for free-thinkers and humanists, perhaps most eloquently evoked by D.H. Lawrence's booklet of poems "Pansies" (1929 - his "More Pansies" was published posthumously). Like "Lady Chatterly's Lover", the poems were quickly banned by the authorities as to racey for even mature readers; the public, of course, must be protected!
The pansy has also been associated with another French word 'panser' which can mean to dress or bandage a wound. The wound of love, maybe, as in our Persian tale?
Regardless, this display dispells some of the wet darkness of this airport.
Loving thoughts: Tulips and pansies, Hortus Botanicus, Leiden, The Netherlands
Overlooking the rainy airport runway of Rochester, NY, my mind turns to the riot of colors of the flowerbeds of the Hortus Botanicus at Leiden, The Netherlands. These beds of about 50 meters length and perhaps three wide, lead from the main gate to the sumptuous and well-labeled finery of the greenhouses.
Densely planted - as this photo shows - with pansies and tulips they are almost brighter than the sun, which shone only weakly when this shot was made.
Pansies and tulips: such a fortuitous combination. A sadly romantic love story from Persia associated with our tulip; and the pansy puts the mind to work (as indeed Shakespeare testifies through the mad words of Ophelia). Farhad de Stone-Cutter was madly in love with Shirin the Princess of Royal Blood. Their's was all the more a perfect and passionate love because it had to go unrequited, and both lost their lives violently; from their blood drops sprang up red tulips. The yellow ones of this picture are age-old symbols of hopeless, unrequited love.
The 'pansy' in English is thought to derive from the French 'penser' (=to think). In warmer weather the pansy droops its face-shaped flower as if in deep thought. Thus it has become a symbol for free-thinkers and humanists, perhaps most eloquently evoked by D.H. Lawrence's booklet of poems "Pansies" (1929 - his "More Pansies" was published posthumously). Like "Lady Chatterly's Lover", the poems were quickly banned by the authorities as to racey for even mature readers; the public, of course, must be protected!
The pansy has also been associated with another French word 'panser' which can mean to dress or bandage a wound. The wound of love, maybe, as in our Persian tale?
Regardless, this display dispells some of the wet darkness of this airport.