LOVE AND THE FLOWERS. 
3 
wandered Love for many a day;—although he 
caught the faint breathing of the blossoms, 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 mother’s favourite flower, it had ever been 
sacred to Venus, and he heard a sound, as of low 
sighing, amongst its leaves ; and when he laid down, 
he felt the drooping petals falling upon his lips and 
around his neck, as if to catch the tears that fell. 
Then it was that Love first kissed the Rose and 
blessed it unawares, for the sweetness and beauty of 
the flower sank into his heart. 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 surpassed 
her charms : and that when every image of poetry 
was exhausted, none could equal her own; that 
from the first creation of flowers, ^he had been 
named “the ornament of the earth, the princess of 
plants, the eye of the flower, the blush of beauty, 
the breath of love.”* That even when her leaves 
had 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 
* Fragment attributed to Sappho. 
