80 THE POETRY OF FLOWERS 
or ornament the mouldering tablet which records the names of 
those now almost forgotten by surviving relatives. 
For this obedient zephyrs bear 
Her light seeds round yon turret’s mould, 
And, undispersed by tempest, there 
They rise in vegetable gold. 
Langhorne. 
Not seldom do we observe a solitary wall-flower growing in 
the falling towers of an ancient castle, where it seems to place 
itself to conceal the unheeded injuries which the barbarians of 
feudal ages had recklessly done to the battlemented pile. Scott 
says:— 
And well the lonely infant knew 
Recesses where the wall-flower grew, 
And honeysuckle loved to crawl 
Up the low crag and ruined wall. 
I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade 
The sun in all his round surveyed. 
We are told that the minstrels and troubadours of former 
days carried a branch of wall-flower as the emblem of an affec¬ 
tion which continues through all the vicissitudes of time, and 
survives every misfortune. 
During the reign of terror in France, the violent populace 
precipitated themselves toward the abbey of St. Denis, to 
disinter the ashes of their kings and scatter them to the winds. 
The barbarians, after breaking open the sacred tombs, were 
affrighted at the sacrilege, and went and hid their spoil 
in an obscure corner behind the choir of the church, where 
they were forgotten amid the horrors of the revolution. The 
poet, Trenuel, some time after visited the spot, and found the 
sculptured fragments covered with the wall-flower. This plant, 
faithful in misfortune, diffused sweet perfumes in that religous 
receptacle, which might be likened to an offering of incense 
