TIME AND THE FLOWERS 
331 
although Nature cannot restore what thou hast over- 
thrown, she can still beautify what remains behind.” 
Time mused a moment, then took up his scythe and 
hurried away, leaving the beautiful Spirit to do as she 
willed with the flowers. 
And ever since that period they have grown about the 
grey ruins which Time hath left behind, and waved upon 
the roofless walls which have decayed beneath his moulder- 
ing touch, and would long ago have crumbled into dust 
but for the flowers, which held the weather-beaten battle- 
ments together. Over many a mound beneath which the 
foundations of forgotten abbeys lie buried, does the crim- 
son-spotted and pensive Cowslip still wave, and the early 
Crocus unfold its golden sheath to catch the cheering sun- 
shine of Spring. 
To Time was given power over the works of man, 
but over those of Nature he holds on sway ; from the very 
flowers that perish others as beautiful spring up, and the 
oak sheds the acorns from which arise other trees. Tem- 
ples and palaces he overturns, and they are no more ; nor 
can we ever know the forgotten graves which he has 
obliterated, and trampled into the dust. 
In the undated summers of the past Youth and Beauty 
wandered over the same flowery meadows which we delight 
in rambling over now; sunshine and shadow swept above 
the long grass; and flowers like those we still look upon 
bowed idly in the breeze before their eyes, as they still 
do before our own. Could they traverse the same spots 
again in the coming summer, saving the altered hedgerow, 
and the rustic stile, they would behold no change : the 
Crocus and the Cowslip, the Bluebell, Buttercup, and 
Daisy, would stand dreaming among the green grass, as 
they did a thousand years ago ; the hoary Hawthorn would 
throw out as sweet a fragrance, and the hidden Violet 
betray the bed where its blue sisters slept, by the delicacy 
of its unaltered perfume : for Time has not left a trace 
of his footmarks upon the flowers. 
The same sunshine which lighted up the silver of the 
Daisy, and deepened the pale gold of the Primrose, when 
Chaucer went forth to do “observance to the May,” 
sleeps upon them in the sweet spring-time of our own 
days; and although the poet would find no traces of the 
