TIME AND THE FLOWERS. 
163 
grey wings sounded the less solemnly upon their 
ears, or the waving of his hoary plumes passed 
the less unnoticed, because they beat only upon a 
race who recorded his flight by the sleeping and 
awakening of the buds. No ! it prepared them for 
the great change which they knew would some 
day take place ; and they looked forward to their 
journey to another world with a saddened pleasure, 
deepened the more by the remembrance of the 
beautiful flowers they were compelled to leave 
behind, and half fearing that they might never 
love those so well, which would bloom for ever, 
in that land of eternal light beyond the grave. 
They knew not the empty love, in which the 
heart is no partaker,—the vows which they breathed 
were intended to reach heaven, and to be registered 
there amid all other holy things : for to them 
the Accusing Spirit was not an empty name—they 
believed that its All-seeing eye kept a severe watch 
over the plighted troth of Love, and that the 
Recording Angel never blotted out a single letter 
which stood beside his name who had broken the 
heart of a fond and confiding woman. Wealth 
had not then ploughed down and dug out that 
deep abyss, every foot of which separates us further 
from heaven ; man wandered not in those days 
in the dark, amid stumbling-blocks and wedges of 
unfeeling gold; he moved not in that cold, cheerless 
