Thorn-Apple.... Deceitful Charms.
Reading edition
The flowers of the Thorn-Apple droop while the sun shines beneath their dull-looking foliage, but on the approach of night, they revive, display their charms, and unfold their prodigious bells, which nature has coloured with purple, lined with ivory; and to which she has given an odour that attracts and intoxicates, but is so dangerous as to stupify those who inhale it even in the open air. It is a dangerous plant to be allowed to grow where children go, as the beauty of its flowers and fruit is liable to tempt them to their destruction; since it possesses so poisonous a quality as to produce paralysis, and even madness, in those who have eaten it. Its leaves have been recommended for coughs and asthma. The charms of the Thorn-Apple flower are beautiful, but deadly; like those of the corrupt and treacherous, to be found in every society.
But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow-falls in the river, A moment white—then melts for ever; Or like the borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place; Or like the rainbow’s lovely form Envanishing amid the storm. Burns.
O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Shakspeare.
Get thee glass eyes; And like a scurvy politician, seem To see the things thou dost not. Shakspeare.
Women of kind have conditions three: The first is,—they be full of deceit, To spinne also is their property, And women have a wonderful conceit, For they can weep oft, and all is a sleight, And ever when they list, a tear is in the eye, Beware, therefore,—the blind eateth many a fly. Chaucer.
Ah, that deceit should steal such gentle shapes, And with a virtuous visor hide deep vice! Shakspeare.
Smooth runs the water, where the brook is deep; And in his simple show he harbours treason. The fox barks not, when he would steal the lamb. No, no, my sovereign; Gloster is a man Unsounded yet, and full of deep deceit. Shakspeare.