her garden to bathe in the silver waves of the sea. The transparent
whiteness of her complexion is seen through the slight veil which covers
it, and shines through the blue waves like the morning star in the azure
sky. She springs into the sea, and mingles with the silvery rays of the
sun, which sparkle on the dimples of the laughing waves. The sun stands
still to gaze upon her; he covers her with kisses, and forgets his duty.
Once, twice, thrice has the night advanced to take her sceptre and reign
over the world; twice had she found the sun upon her way. Since that
day the lord of the universe has changed the princess into a rose; and
this is why the rose always hangs her head and blushes when the sun
gazes on her." There are a variety of rose-legends of this kind in different
countries, the universal popularity of this favourite blossom having from
the earliest times made it justly in repute; and according to the Hindoo
mythologists, Pagoda Sin, one of the wives of Vishnu, was discovered in
a rose--a not inappropriate locality.
Like the rose, many plants have been extensively associated with
sacred legendary lore, a circumstance which frequently explains their
origin. A pretty legend, for instance, tells us how an angel was sent to
console Eve when mourning over the barren earth. Now, no flower grew
in Eden, and the driving snow kept falling to form a pall for earth's
untimely funeral after the fall of man. But as the angel spoke, he caught a
flake of falling snow, breathed on it, and bade it take a form, and bud
and blow. Ere it reached the ground it had turned into a beautiful flower,
which Eve prized more than all the other fair plants in Paradise; for the
angel said to her:--
"This is an earnest, Eve, to thee,
That sun and summer soon shall be."
The angel's mission ended, he departed, but where he had stood a
ring of snowdrops formed a lovely posy.
This legend reminds us of one told by the poet Shiraz, respecting the
origin of the forget-me-not:--"It was in the golden morning of the early
world, when an angel sat weeping outside the closed gates of Eden. He
had fallen from his high estate through loving a daughter of earth, nor
was he permitted to enter again until she whom he loved had planted
the flowers of the forget-me-not in every corner of the world. He
returned to earth and assisted her, and they went hand in hand over the
world planting the forget-me-not. When their task was ended, they
entered Paradise together; for the fair woman, without tasting the
bitterness of death, became immortal like the angel, whose love her
beauty had won, when she sat by the river twining the forget-me-not in
her hair." This is a more poetic legend than the familiar one given in
Mill's "History of Chivalry," which tells how the lover, when trying to