60 
POETICAL LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
bounded sky, and his attendants only the surrounding 
flowers. 
Who can tell what sad feelings hung about the 
heart of the fair Saxon princess Rowena, when, stand- 
ino- in the twilight, on the broom-covered steep hill side, 
she saw from the distance, the fires kindled by the 
hands of the desolating Dane, and beheld the flames 
which devoured the home of her childhood, reddening 
the evening sky ? It might be that while she found a 
couch among the waving gold of the wild, surrounded 
by her houseless attendants, and pillowed her head 
upon the Broom, she selected it as the emblem of 
Humility. And when she saw the waving Blue-bells 
spring up on the very spot where the stormy sea-kings 
had encamped, where the tide of battle had raged, and 
swollen, and subsided, leaving no other trace of its 
course than the silent ridges which had heaved up over 
the dead; she selected the blue-cupped flower as the true 
image of constancy; which, though crushed, and bruis¬ 
ed, and buried, forsaketli not the chosen spot where its 
beauty first bloomed. That when she sat mournful 
beside the moorland lake, wearied through carrying 
water to quench the thirst of the bia\e Saxons, 
who had been wounded in battle, she saw the pale 
