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There the bees now living laboured, and those that followed would find their sweets in the clover, scarlet and purple and white, in the foxgloves, in the upland deserts of the heather with their oases of euphrasy and sweet wild thyme. "Is it a true swarm or a cast?" inquired John Grimbal. "A swarm, without much question, though it dawned an unlikely day for an old queen to leave the hive.
Thence it hath been called in the vulgar tongue 'eye-bright', nevertheless its true name is euphrasy, and thus it is known among apothecaries." "It must be right," said Lindsay. "It's the only one that is said to do any good to the eyesight. The others seem to be for toothaches or agues." "Or to heal wounds or sores," said Cicely.
You know the Paradise Lost? and you remember, from the eleventh book, in its earlier part, that laudanum already existed in Eden nay, that it was used medicinally by an archangel; for, after Michael had 'purged with euphrasy and rue' the eyes of Adam, lest he should be unequal to the mere sight of the great visions about to unfold their draperies before him, next he fortifies his fleshly spirits against the affliction of these visions, of which visions the first was death.
Read the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel, with an eye "purged with euphrasy and rue," so that you can take in the full spiritual significance of the comparisons and metaphors, and your whole soul will dissolve in tears, as you perceive how the great and pure God, in every instance in which He saves an apostate spirit, is compelled to bow His heavens and come down into a loathsome sty of sensuality.
You know the Paradise Lost? and you remember, from the eleventh book, in its earlier part, that laudanum already existed in Eden nay, that it was used medicinally by an archangel; for, after Michael had 'purged with euphrasy and rue' the eyes of Adam, lest he should be unequal to the mere sight of the great visions about to unfold their draperies before him, next he fortifies his fleshly spirits against the affliction of these visions, of which visions the first was death.
Yellow stars of biting stone-crop covered the walls of the ruin; the fruit of the blackthorn was growing purple, of the hawthorn, red; the lesser dodder crept, like pink lacework, over furze and heather; bright-eyed euphrasy and sweet wild thyme were murmured over by many bees; at the altar's foot grew brake fern and towering foxgloves; while upon the sacred stone itself brambles laid their fruit, a few ripe blackberries shining from clusters of red and green.
"Then purged with euphrasy and rue His visual orbs, for he had much to see." Spenser speaks of it in the same strain: "Yet euphrasie may not be left unsung, That gives dim eyes to wander leagues around." And Thomson says: "If she, whom I implore, Urania, deign With euphrasy to purge away the mists, Which, humid, dim the mirror of the mind."
In these delightful moments, released from the burden of her tyrant malady, her eyes seem to have been touched with the herb euphrasy, and she has the gift, denied to the rest of her generation, of seeing nature and describing what she sees.
Our ancestors may have thought it as well to combine the old charm of rue and the new Christian potency of holy water. Thus there would be a distinct analogy between Homeric moly and English 'herb of grace. 'Euphrasy and rue' were employed to purge and purify mortal eyes. Pliny is very learned about the magical virtues of rue.
There was a magic in numbers; three, seven and nine were better than six, eleven or thirteen. Certain flowers were marked for use in sacred sculpture as they were for other purposes. Euphrasy or eyebright with its little bright eye was a medicine for sore eyes.
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