OLD SAXON FLOWERS. 
41 
heart of the fair Saxon princess Ethelberga when, 
standing in the twilight, on the broom-covered 
steep hill-side, she saw from the distance the fires 
kindled by the hands of the desolating Dane, and 
beheld the flames which devoured the home of her 
childhood reddening in the evening sky ? It might 
be that whilst she found a couch amongst the 
waving gold of the wild, surrounded by her houseless 
attendants, and pillowed her beautiful head upon 
the Broom', she selected it as the emblem of Hu¬ 
mility. And when she saw the waving Blue-bells 
spring up on the very spot where the stormy sea- 
kings had encamped—where the tide of battle had 
raged, and swollen, and subsided, leaving no other 
trace of its course than the silent ridges which had 
heaped up over the dead; she selected the blue- 
cupped flower as the true image of Constancy; which, 
though crushed, and bruised, and buried, forsaketh 
not the chosen spot where its beauty first bloomed. 
That when she sat mournful beside the moorland 
mere, wearied through carrying water to quench the 
thirst of the brave Saxons, who had been wounded 
in battle, she saw the pale Water-lilies sleeping 
upon their dark-green velvet leaves, spotless as the 
clear element upon which they floated, and leaving 
no vestige of the gross earth from which they 
sprung ; and she thought how the heart of a woman, 
ennobled by virtuous deeds, might become so 
