184 POETICAL LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
blue sisters slept, by the delicacy of its unaltcied pei- 
fume : for Time would not have left a trace of his 
footmarks upon the flowers. The same sunshine 
which lighted up the silver of the Daisy, and deepened 
the pale gold of the Primrose, when Chaucer went 
forth to do “ observance to the May,” sleeps upon them 
in the sweet spring of our own time ; and although he 
would find no traces of the castles in which he was 
ever a welcome guest, his favorite fioweis would be 
there to greet him with a silent welcome, as they did 
in the days of old, when he went forth to listen to'the 
song of the nightingale. And those Roses which, 
between the wars of the rival houses of York and Lan¬ 
caster, caused blood enough to be shed to make the 
white for ever red, would be found blowing as peace¬ 
fully in a few old gardens as if the blast of war had 
never been heard in the world; bearing about them 
no traces of the strife and the struggle which the grave 
has for ever hushed, nor a mark of the finger of Time 
upon the unsullied bloom of their buds. INoi could 
the eye that then beheld them tell that a flower had 
changed: for, as they looked on the morning of battle, 
and on the evening of the same day, when the sun 
sunk over a field crimson with blood, so do they look 
