THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
37 
nous ornament of every festival and every solemn sacri¬ 
fice. Syria, Arabia, and Persia vie in their admiration 
of it. In the East, indeed, this fairest of flowers attains 
its greatest perfection. There is distilled the precious 
Attar, which makes it live forever. 
“ Its breath 
Is rich beyond the rest; and when it dies 
It doth bequeath a charm to sweeten death.” 
Barry Cornwall. 
The love of the nightingale for the rose is continually 
mentioned by the Eastern bards, and we find many allu¬ 
sions to it in our English rhymes. Moore says, — 
“ Though rich the spot 
With every flower this earth has got, 
What is it to the nightingale, 
If there his darling rose is not.’ 1 ” 
And Byron sings, — 
“ How welcome is each gentle air 
That wakes and wafts the odors there! 
For there the rose, o’er crag and vale, 
Sultana of the nightingale, 
The maid for whom his melody, 
His thousand songs, is heard on high, 
Blooms blushing to her lover’s tale: 
His queen, the garden’s queen, his rose, 
Unbent by winds, unchilled by snows, 
Far from the winters of the west, 
By every breeze and season blest, 
Returns the sweets by nature given 
In softest incense back to heaven, 
And grateful yields that smiling sky, 
Her fairest hue and fragrant sigh.” 
In France there takes place annually a beautiful cere¬ 
mony, which originated as follows : Saint Medard, 
4 
