OLD SAXON FLOWERS. 
61 
Water-lilies sleeping upon their dark-green velvet 
leaves, spotless as the clear element upon which they 
floated, and leaving no vestige of the gross earth from 
which they sprung; and she thought how the heart of 
a woman, ennobled by virtuous deeds, might become 
so purified, that if looked into by the eye of an angel, 
he could not discover within, either blot, or blemish, 
nor aught that varied from his own divinity, but the 
fond humanity of love. Musing, she might conjure up 
some gray old Saxon abbey, nestling amid the silence 
of a green, sequestered valley, with its quiet graves, 
around which the Rosemary grew, hallowed the more 
in its remembrance, through having been brought by 
holy men across the pathless sea ; and she might think 
that even as that plant put forth its flowers in the dead 
midnight of winter, so through the deep clouds which 
hung over and darkened her native land, the morninsr 
of peace might yet break, and see many a battle-field 
again overgrown with flowers. 
It was in those days that Love and Constancy set 
out together to visit the world, and look for the abode 
of Happiness: for there were rumors abroad that she 
had concealed herself somewhere in the earth, and they 
were fearful that Happiness had long pined for their 
