HOW THE ROSE BECAME RED. 
77 
recounting the deeds of other days, when they waged 
war against the Titans. Even the chariot of Venus 
! stood unyoked at the foot of the mount; the silken 
traces lay loosely thrown together upon the ground, 
and the white doves were idly hovering round in the 
' • ' , 
air ; for the weeping Goddess was so overwhelmed 
with sorrow, that she had forgotten to waft her light¬ 
winged whisper to the Mount of Olympus; nor had 
they received any summons from the charioteer Love, 
who lay sleeping upon a bed of roses, with his bow 
I 
and arrows by his side. 
In the glade of this vast forest of the old primeval 
world, whose echoes had never been startled by the 
blows of a descending axe, nor a branch rent from 
their majestic boles, saving by the dreaded bolts of the 
Thunderer, or some earth-shaking storm, which, in his 
anffer, he had blown abroad, the Goddess of Beauty 
still continued to sit, as if unconscious of the savage 
solitude which surrounded her ; nor did she notice the 
back-kneed Satyrs, that peered upon her unrobed love¬ 
liness with burning eyes, from many a shadowy recess 
in the thick-leaved underwood. Upon the trunks of the 
mighty and storm-tortured trees, the sunset here and 
there flashed down in rays of molten gold, making 
