46 POETICAL LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
and, throwing aside their regal dignity, rested them¬ 
selves among the homely villagers. He told her how 
Love is stronger than Death—that the wide waters 
which overflow Egypt would be unable to quench it; 
and that while he slept, his heart was still awake, and 
that his dreams were ever of Love. 
Although the Myrtle is consecrated to Venus, and 
formed the garland with which the Goddess of Love 
and Beauty was crowned, growing also around the 
temples which were dedicated to her worship, still its 
antiquity dates not so far back as the Forget-me-not, 
which is as old as memory, and coeval with the crea¬ 
tion of man. It was among the first flowers that sprang 
up from the saturated earth, after the overwhelming 
waters of the great deluge had subsided. Its history 
is found in the earliest records of the world, and woven 
with those legends which were current among the 
O o 
I 
builders of Babel, who, in their ambition, attempted to 
rear a tower, the summit of which was to reach the 
stars. Thousands of the traditions, that were rich in 
the lore of the antediluvian world, have been lost for 
ages, and it is only in those countries which were first 
peopled by the sons and daughters of Noah, that we ‘ 
are able to trace the faint outline of their origin, and in 
