120 
LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
a gentle shower throws a richer odour over the 
summer landscape, so do the many fears which ever 
hang like blossoms upon the tender spray of Love 
tremble before every breath that blows, lest it should 
sweep off some cherished bloom. And ever upon 
the ear falls the melancholy truth of “ all that’s fair 
must fade;” that Love is ever driven back to its 
infancy, for, long ere it is permitted to attain per¬ 
fection, it droops and dies ; like roses, which no 
sooner burst out into full bloom, than they wither; 
that there is no beyond, no choice but to die, or 
look back and sigh to “ become a bird again,” and 
live over the same brief life : and such is the doom 
of all earthly love. 
It was a clear, bright morning in spring, one of 
those mornings in which Summer seems to have 
stepped forth from her golden chamber before her 
time, as if to look upon her great garden the earth, 
to see how her buds and blossoms are progressing ; 
when high in the centre of the open village-green, 
towering above the aged elm, whose weather-beaten 
stem was surrounded by rustic seats, rose, the tall 
Maypole, hung with gaudy garlands, in which flut¬ 
tered ribands of as many dyes as there were varied 
hues in the flowers, amid which they were twined. 
At the foot of the Maypole stood a rustic throne of 
trellis-work, covered with flowers and branches of 
Hawthorn blossoms, drooping in many a graceful 
