194 
FLORAL ANTIQUITIES OE THE EAST. 
64 Twining the floweret in her rainbow wreath, 
She bore it, followed by the golden beam, 
To bygone ages and to distant climes.” 
Something of the beautiful yet remains to man, some¬ 
thing of the fair and good, to cheer the hours of the 
present, and serve as emblems of the future and the past. 
We talk of the gone-time as if dreams and shadows only 
peopled it—as if the spirits of the great moved amid 
forms of darkness—dealing only with their dreams; 
while we look forward through a hope whose atmo¬ 
sphere is rosy, and with many beatings of the heart and 
pulse, believe in the reality of the future. Yet the pre¬ 
sent is but another leaf unfolded on the tree of time ; 
the future will be but a leaf added, and added too, as 
leaves are out of doors, certainly, but imperceptibly. 
The present is the only reality, and love as we may those 
reveries in which the past comes back in shadow, we 
may at least receive it as a reality for the time, and go 
back to it over a path of flowers. The future is a cloud, 
the past is a cloud also ; but in it there are gaps of sun¬ 
shine, and between its wreathing folds we see glimpses of 
men and women—breathing forms of thought—here 
