Hawthorn

Johan Laurentz Jensen, "Still Life with Hawthorn Blossom"

Hawthorn (Cratægus) is a large genus of shrubs and trees in the rose family, Rosaceae, native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere in Europe, Asia and North America. The name hawthorn was originally applied to the species native to northern Europe, especially the Common Hawthorn C. monogyna, and the unmodified name is often so used in Britain and Ireland. However, the name is now also applied to the entire genus, and also to the related Asian genus Rhaphiolepis.

Sourced

• Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale.
  • Robert Burns, The Cotter's Saturday Night (1786), Stanza 9.

• Yet, all beneath the unrivall'd rose,
  The lowly daisy sweetly blows;
  Tho' large the forest's monarch throws
  His army shade,
  Yet green the juicy hawthorn grows,
  Adown the glade.
  • Robert Burns, The Vision (1786), Duan II, Stanza 21.

• The hawthorn-bush, with seats beneath the shade
  For talking age and whispering lovers made!
  • Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770), line 13.

• And every shepherd tells his tale
  Under the hawthorn in the dale.
  • John Milton, L'Allegro (1631), line 67.

• Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade
  To shepherds looking on their silly sheep
  Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy
  To kings that fear their subjects' treachery?
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III (c. 1591), Act II, scene 5, line 42.

• In hawthorn-time the heart grows light.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Tale of Balen (1896), I.

• The Hawthorn whitens; and the juicy Groves
  Put forth their buds, unfolding by degrees,
  Till the whole leafy Forest stands displayed,
  In full luxuriance, to the sighing gales.
  • James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring (1728), line 90.

• There is a Thorn,—it looks so old,
  In truth, you'd find it hard to say
  How it could ever have been young,
  It looks so old and gray.
  Not higher than a two years child
  It stands erect, this aged Thorn;
  No leaves it has, no prickly points;
  It is a mass of knotted joints,
  A wretched thing forlorn.
  It stands erect, and like a stone
  With lichens is it overgrown.
  • William Wordsworth, The Thorn; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 787.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 356.

• The hawthorn-trees blow in the dew of the morning.
  • Robert Burns, Chevalier's Lament.

• The hawthorn I will pu' wi' its lock o' siller gray,
  Where, like an aged man, it stands at break o' day.
  • Robert Burns, O Luve Will Venture In.

• Yet walk with me where hawthorns hide
  The wonders of the lane.
  • Ebenezer Elliott, The Wonders of the Lane, line 3.

• Then sing by turns, by turns the Muses sing;
  Now hawthorns blossom.
  • Alexander Pope, Spring, line 41.