LEGEND OF THE SPIRIT-FLOWERS. 127 
faded into a pearly white, then laughingly planted 
them again in the ground, causing them for ever to 
partake of the candor, and sweetness, and innocence 
of the tender hearts on which they were first nursed, 
and the gentle spirit by whose purity their color was 
changed. Round the Daisy, whose edge before was a 
white unbroken rim, they clipped the ridge into the 
star-like silver which it now wears, and called it the 
Eye of Day. They picked up the smallest Primroses 
they could find, and, planting them upon one stem, 
spotted their centres with the deepest crimson, and 
thus formed the Cowslip. They swept up all the 
waste and sweetest blossoms that had blown together, 
crushing them in the hand until they formed a solid 
clump of cream-colored flowers, and so made the 
meadow sweet, that the fields might still be laden with 
the perfume of May, when the bloom had flown from 
off the Hawthorn, and resolved itself into one of Sum¬ 
mer’s unseen perfumes. They made the large marsh 
Marigold to plant beside high-banked streams, that in 
the water the deep gold of the flowers might be re¬ 
flected, giving them a sun of their own to throw its 
cheerful and yellow light upon the ripples, in these 
deep, shadowy, and out-of-the-way places, which the 
