Lilacs express the beautiful sadness of love, the feeling—always available to the lover—of impending farewell.
Lilacs are purple and white and, as is often the case with these hues, suggest both passion and absence. In European folklore, the white lilac is said to have once been the purple, blanched overnight on the grave of a young suicide wrongly convinced that she, like Juliet, had been forsaken. In the white bloom we find her passion departed but her farewell forever.
The people of the English countryside considered lilacs the quintessential bloom of May, embodying the all-too-brief perfection of spring. For this reason, the Victorians identified lilac with the first emotion of love. Potently fragrant, the flower was once thought capable of warding off the Black Death itself.
