It chanced, as once, for nightly prayer, They reach'd the choir--the Rose was there! Oh grief! before a youth it lay, Warning that his life's young day Must wither in its blooming May! With sudden mortal pang, dismay'd At thought, like the brief Rose to fade; While death and awful judgment near Made life's half-tasted charms more dear; The youth, with anxious, trembling haste, Unseen, the boding flower displaced; Thus might the signal'd doom betide, He deem'd, the brother at his side, Who, calm in age, his last repose Long waiting, hailed the welcome Rose! For him, by faith assured, to die-- His birth of immortality! But on the morrow--hark! the sound Of sorrow's wailings echoes round: What means the tear--the plaint--the sigh? Why sits despair in every eye? Oh, dire presage! two souls had fled-- The old man and the youth were dead! And with dumb wondering awe they view The White Rose tinged with purple hue! For this the ceaseless knell is rung, For this the choral Requiem sung:-- And when, few summers past, once more They wept a brother gone before; No longer the White Rose was seen; It shunn'd the spot where crime had been! A pilgrim in the Alpine vale, I heard the legendary tale; And as at eve, by Fancy woo'd, Amid the dark'ning aisles I stood; O'er crumbling stone and grassy mound, I saw the White Rose blooming round! Death's flower, methought, fit emblem made To dwell in Ruin's silent shade! And may the youth--I breathed a prayer-- Have owned the Saviour's pardoning care, Who, deaf to warnings from the sky, Tinged the White Rose with murder's dye! GREEK FIRE AND GUNPOWDER.[73] The traditional account of inventions and discoveries whose origin is involved in the darkness of antiquity is generally short and summary. To some fortunate individual, whose name, either from his having actually taken the most prominent part in the progress of the discovery, or, as is more generally the case, having with the greatest and most persevering energy impressed it upon the public, the whole merit is ascribed and the whole glory attached. The world, active though its individual members be, as to their own specialties, is inert as a mass, and glad to save itself the trouble of entering into details by adopting the hypothesis which has been most urgently forced upon its notice, or which has caught its attention at one of its most wakeful periods. We thus find nearly every discovery which has added to the permanent stock of human knowledge attributed to a single individual, and to a single guess of that individual.