143 POETICAL LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
cattle, or the clearest streams went murmuring along 
through miles of beautiful pastoral scenery,—it was 
then that Love, during his pilgrimage to the shrines 
of the flowers, chanced to alight in one of those green 
valleys, which opened out every way, beyond the long 
avenues of venerable oaks, that threw their shady 
arms over the smooth and flowery plains of Arcadia. 
Below the oaks spread many a long underwood of fra¬ 
grant Acacias, of every hue which the queenly Rose 
wears through the endless changes of her diversified 
attire,—from the deep crimson to the warm white, as 
it deepens upward, tint into tint, till you cannot tell 
where the first faint blush commences, nor trace the 
almost imperceptible shades it passes through, until it 
settles down into a deeper crimsom than w T as ever 
woven into those richly-dyed curtains, which the hand 
of Evening draws across 'the sky, when the sun has 
descended into his golden chamber beneath the ocean. 
Around the stems of the Acacias gracefully twined 
every variety of the Sweet, and Everlasting Pea, while 
their fragrant flowers of white, and red, and purple, 
showed like thousands of winged butterflies, which 
had alighted amid those emerald leaves and curled 
tendrils, as if to rest awhile, before they sallied forth to 
