"And then one day a great sadness came upon the fair garden between
the hills. A young traveler from an unknown country had come to the
white palace, and one sunny afternoon the Princess Beautiful had led
him among the beds of primroses and lilies and daffodils. And when the
sun was going down and she turned and looked into his face, and saw how
fair he was, and how the sun made his hair like gold, how it shimmered
on his beautiful garments of velvet and fine lace, she felt for the
first time a great love arise within her heart. Then, all at once,
she forgot her garden, her palace and her pride--forgot everything in
all the world except the fair youth who stood there with her in the
sunset--and she told him her great new love.
"And as she spoke, softly and tenderly, the words she had never spoken
to any one before, the breeze died, and the sun slipped down behind
the far-off hills. And then, as the light faded, it seemed to the
Princess Beautiful that the fair youth before her was fading, too.
His face grew dim and misty--his hair became a blur of gold--his rare
garments melted back into the beds of bloom. And behold, instead of
the fair youth there stood before her in the twilight only a wonderful
golden lily with a crimson heart.
"Then the Princess Beautiful knew that because she had cared only for
her garden, and had sent from her those who had offered a great love
like her own, that this wonderful lily had come to her as a youth with
a face of radiant beauty, and with hair of gold, to awaken a human love
in her heart. And each day she mourned there by the splendid lily, and
called upon it to return to her as the fair youth she had loved; and at
last when its flowers faded and the stem drooped, the white palace of
the Princess Beautiful was empty, for the Princess lay dead beside the
withered lily in the rare garden between the hills.
"And there they made her grave, and above it they built a trellis where
a white climbing rose might grow. But when the rose bloomed, instead
of being white, it was a wonderful crimson, such as no one had ever
seen before. And when the other flowers saw those beautiful crimson
blossoms, they no longer mourned, for they said, 'This is our Princess
Beautiful who has returned to be our queen.'
"And so it was the red rose became the queen of flowers, and a symbol
of great human love. The poet Burns sings,
'My love is like a red, red rose
That's newly blown in June,'
and it was always in June that the great crimson rose bloomed on the
grave in the garden of the Princess Beautiful."
"And did the lily ever bloom again?" asked little Prue.
"I'm sure it must have done so. We always speak of roses and lilies
as belonging together, and there is a great golden lily called the
Superbus, which I think might have been the beautiful youth that came
to the white palace."
"Does the story mean that we shouldn't care too much for our gardens?"
asked Davy. "More than for folks, I mean?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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