LOVE AND THE FLOWERS. 
19 
had only learned what the bees said when they hung 
murmuring over the honeyed bells, and what words 
the butterflies whispered as they alighted upon the 
flowers with subsiding wings. Onward 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 favorite 
flower; it had ever been sacred to Yenus, and he 
heard a sound as of low sighing among 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; and 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. 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 surpassed 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 flower, 
