Song of Solomon 2:12

The Key Of The Summer

The flowers appear on the earth. Song of Solomon 2:12.

If, on this April morning, I were to ask the girls the name of their favorite spring flower, I believe they would nearly all answer, “the primrose.”

Flowers, indeed, make the best of companions; they do us good and no evil; and the little yellow primrose seems to possess nearly every good quality that one looks for in a flower.

Buskin, who studied flowers and many things like them, speaks of the primrose as a flower of gracious breeding. That means that in her own domain among flowers, the primrose possesses the qualities of a real lady. I wonder if the girls will recognize Ruskin's little lady when they see her. He says that the primrose grows naturally, being content to remain a child, until the time comes when it can blossom out and make the woods beautiful for us.

At first, when the primrose is very young, it is confined within five pinching green leaves whose points close over it. That is the nursery of the primrose. Then the green leaves unclose their points the little yellow ones peep out like ducklings. They find the light delicious, open to it, and grow, and grow, then throw themselves wide at last into their perfect rose. But they never quite leave their old nursery for all that; it and they live on together, and the nursery seems a part of the flower. That just means that a real lady, even if she be very clever, is simple and childlike all the time.

And like the beauty of a true gentlewoman the primrose's beauty is quiet and modest. She does not dress herself in gaudy clothes and show herself in conspicuous places as if to say, “Look at me, everybody!” She peeps out modestly from her circlet of green leaves, and her modesty makes her all the more charming. And she is a plucky little flower too. She does not always have good weather, and yet she sets a brave face to the blast, and never fails to bloom for us though April may drop a cold hailstone or two into the very heart of her petals. No wonder we love and admire her! Beauty, modesty, and pluck combined are not found every day.

Primroses and Easter generally come together. Spring is the Easter of the earth when all the trees and the flowers that have seemed dead through the winter begin to rise again. It brings to us the thought that there is really no death. In the German language the primrose has a name that means the “key” flower. Probably the name was taken from the fable which tells that it has some magic power of discovering hidden treasure. We don't believe in magic, but we all believe the primrose to be the key of the summer. And because Jesus died and rose again He has been called the “Key of the grave.”

Boys and girls, look around this April morning: resurrection is on every hand. Remember the primrose, the “key” of summer, and, better still, remember Him who is the “Key of the grave.”