HOW THE ROSE BECAME RED. 
77 
recounting the deeds of other days, when they waged 
war against the Titans. Even the chariot of Venus 
stood unyoked at the foot of the mount; the silken 
traces lay loosely thrown together upon the ground, 
and the white doves were idly hovering round in the 
air ; for the weeping Goddess was so overwhelmed 
with sorrow, that she had forgotten to waft her light¬ 
winged whisper to the Mount of Olympus; nor had 
they received any summons from the charioteer Love, 
who lay sleeping upon a bed of roses, with his bow 
and arrows by his side. 
In the glade of this vast forest of the old primeval 
world, whose echoes had never been startled by the 
blows of a descending axe, nor a branch rent from 
their majestic boles, saving by the dreaded bolts of the 
Thunderer, or some earth-shaking storm, which, in his 
anger, he had blown abroad, the Goddess of Beauty 
still continued to sit, as if unconscious of the savage 
solitude which surrounded her; nor did she notice the 
back-kneed Satyrs, that peered upon her unrobed love¬ 
liness with burning eyes, from many a shadowy recess 
in the thick-leaved underwood. Upon the trunks of the 
mighty and storm-tortured trees, the sunset here and 
there flashed down in rays of molten gold, making 
