28 o 
POPULAR TALES OF FLOWERS 
battlements he beheld the wild Wall-flowers blowing; and 
when he inquired why they still haunted such a scene of 
decay and desolation, they answered that they had out- 
lived all that was once lovely and happy; and although 
Beauty no longer reigned there, and the banquet-hall was 
deserted, and the voice of the lute had ceased to sound 
in the lady’s bower, they were still Faithful amid all the 
storms of Adversity. 
Long did Love brood over the new language which he 
had discovered ; and many a day did he sit pondering 
to himself, as if hesitating whether or not he should trust 
Woman with the secret. 
“ She is already armed with beauty,” reasoned Love, 
as he sat with his elbow pillowed on a bed of flowers, his 
bow unstrung, and his arrows scattered at random by his 
side ; “ there is a language in her eyes, and a sweet music 
in her voice; and shall I now teach her to converse 
through flowers — to give a tongue to the rose, a voice to 
the lily, and hang upon the honeysuckle words of love, 
and turn every blossom she gathers into the language of 
affection? No; I will again fly abroad, and, dropping a 
bud here, and a bell there, see to what purpose she turn- 
eth these beautiful secrets. I will but at first teach her 
a few letters in this new Alphabet of Love.” 
Then he thought that, as the flowers were such holy 
things — born of beauty and nursed in purity, fed upon 
the dews, and seldom looking upon aught less sacred than 
the stars, as if they were more allied to heaven than to 
earth — that if the virtue, and goodness, and love, which 
they represent, were but practised by mankind, they would 
again make the children of earth what they were in the 
infancy of the world, and man would once more be ranked 
“only a little lower than the angels.” 
Love flew to the burning East, where Beauty is guarded 
by jealous lattices, and Pride, armed with sharp scimitar, 
stands always ready, feeling its cold, keen edge, and wait- 
ing to cut every heart-sprung affection asunder, to punish 
a fond look unaccompanied by wealth with death, and to 
dig a grave for every hallowed feeling that is unattended 
by powes. Love dropped a few flowers in the guarded 
turret, and then concealed himself. 
A whit© band shaped them after the fond feelings of 
