INTRODUCTION. 
9 
yet the meaning of their lowest words was still to him a 
mystery. At last, weary and sad at heart, he sat down 
and wept upon a bed of roses. The rose was his moth¬ 
er’s favorite flower; it had ever been sacred to Venus, 
and he heard a sound as of low sighing amongst its 
leaves ; and when he lay down, he felt the drooping 
petals falling upon his lips and around his neck, as if to 
catch the tears that fell; and then it was that Love first 
kissed the Hose and blessed it unawares, for the sweet¬ 
ness and beauty of the flower sank into his heart. And 
whilst folded upon his lips, she told him that ages ago 
Jove selected her for the Queen of Flowers and the 
Goddess of Beauty; that nothing human had ever sur¬ 
passed her charms; and that when every image of 
poetry was exhausted, none could equal her own ; that, 
from the first creation of flowers, she had been named 
“ the ornament of the earth, the princess of plants, the 
eye of the flowers, the blush of beauty, the breath of 
love ; ” and that even when her leaves withered, to mark 
her immortal origin, she gave not up her breath, but , 
still lived in a spirit of invisible fragrance ; that she 
never knew old age, but sank to sleep in perfume, in the 
full perfection of her beauty, for she was the fairest 
daughter that was born of the Mother of Love. 
So Love found his sweet and long lost sister in the 
Rose, and she first spoke to him in the old language of 
