TRE QUEEN OF MAY 311 
They swept up all the waste and sweetest blossoms that 
had blown together, crushing them in the hand until they 
formed a solid clump of cream-coloured flowers, and so 
made the Meadow-sweet, that the fields might still be 
laden with the perfume of May, when the bloom had 
flown from off the Hawthorn, and resolved itself into one 
of summer’s unseen perfumes. 
They made the large Marsh Marigold to plant beside 
high-banked streams, that in the water the deep gold of 
the flowers might be reflected; giving them a sun of their 
own to throw its cheerful and yellow light upon the 
ripples, in those deep, shadowy, and out-of-the-way places 
which the sunshine of heaven but seldom visits. 
And unto all these they gave presiding powers, em- 
blems, and virtues, and mysterious meanings; many of 
which Love never recovered again, when he set out on 
his pilgrimage to visit the Shrines of the Flowers. And 
ever as they formed the flowers, and strung the beaded 
buds together upon the stems, and perfumed the petals 
with odours which they had gathered in the gardens of 
heaven, their voices blended together as they chanted the 
lays brought from another w^orld. 
THE QUEEN OF MAY. 
It was a clear, bright morning in spring, one of those- 
mornings in wEich summer seems to have stepped forth 
from her golden chamber before her time, as if to look 
upon her great garden the earth, to see how her buds and 
blossoms are progressing, when high in the centre of the- 
open village green, towering above the aged elm, whose 
weather-beaten stem was surrounding by rustic seats, rose' 
the tall Maypole, hung with gaudy garlands, in which 
fluttered ribands of as many dyes as there were varied 
hues in the flowers amid which they were twined. 
At the foot of the Maypole stood a rustic throne of 
trellis- work, covered with flowers and branches of Haw- 
thorn blossoms, drooping in many a graceful form ; and' 
on it was seated the Queen of May, her beautiful brow 
crowned ^Eth a simple wreath of wild roses; while, hand" 
