ONE pleasant day in the latter part of eternity, as the Shades of all the great writers were reposing upon beds of
asphodel and moly in the Elysian fields, each happy in hearing from the lips of the others nothing but copious quotation from his own works (for so Jove had kindly bedeviled their ears), there came in among them with triumphant mien a Shade whom none knew.
"When I had told him this, the ghost of Achilles strode off across a meadow full of asphodel, exulting over what I had said concerning the prowess of his son.
"After him I saw huge Orion in a meadow full of asphodel driving the ghosts of the wild beasts that he had killed upon the mountains, and he had a great bronze club in his hand, unbreakable for ever and ever.
I had buried my romance in a bed of
asphodel. She dragged it out again and assured me that I had spoiled her life.
They know not how much more the half is than the whole, nor what great advantage there is in mallow and
asphodel (1).
Her hand he seis'd, and to a shadie bank, Thick overhead with verdant roof imbowr'd He led her nothing loath; Flours were the Couch, Pansies, and Violets, and
Asphodel, And Hyacinth, Earths freshest softest lap.
She WAS ethereal, sublimated by purity, as shy and modest as a violet, as fragile-slender as a lily, and her eyes, luminous and shrinking tender, were as
asphodels on the sward of heaven.
The location of the fire was also home to dew and a large quantity of bog
asphodel, found in damp and boggy areas of heaths and moors.
Josh also had some white beak sedge and bog
asphodel, which are rare.
In the poem above--it is a stanza from a longer poem,
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower, published in 1955--Williams obviously is not referring to the "news" we find in newspapers or medical journals.
Aloe ferox, a native of South Africa and a member of the
asphodel family, starts to send up its amazing flower stems this month.
He paid meticulous attention to the wild flowers at each site--particularly the 'pink and rather spasmodic'
asphodel, which for him epitomised the 'reckless glory' of ancient Greece.