Welcome, Stork! Thou Stork, welcome; Thou hast brought us the sign of spring, Thou hast made our heart gay. Descend, O Stork! Descend, O Stork, upon our roof, Make thy nest upon our ash-tree. I will tell thee my thousand sorrows, The sorrows of my heart, the thousand sorrows, Stork, when thou didst go away, When thou didst go away from our tree, Withering winds did blow, They dried up our smiling flowers. The brilliant sky was obscured, That brilliant sky was cloudy: From above they were breaking the snow in pieces: Winter approached, the destroyer of flowers. Beginning from the rock of Varac, Beginning from that rock of Varac, The snow descended and covered all; In our green meadow it was cold. Stork, our little garden, Our little garden was surrounded with snow; Our green rose trees Withered with the snow and the cold. But now the rose trees in the garden are green again, and out abroad wild flowers enamel the earth. Down pour the torrents of melted snow off Mount Ararat, down crash the avalanches of ice and stones let loose by the sun's might; wherever an inch of soil or rock is uncovered it becomes a carpet of blossom. High up, even to 13,000 feet above the sea-level, the deep violet aster, the saxifrage, and crocus, and ranunculus, and all our old Alpine acquaintances, form a dainty morsel for the teeth, or a carpet for the foot, of swift capricorn or not less agile wild sheep. A little lower, amidst patches of yet frozen snow, hyacinths scent the air, yellow squills and blue anemones peep out, clumps of golden iris cluster between the rocks. There, too, is the "Fountain's Blood," or "Blood of the Seven Brothers," as the Turk would say, with its crimson, leafless stalk and lily-like bloom, the reddest of all red flowers. Upon the trees comes the sweet white _kasbe_, a kind of manna much relished by the inhabitants. Amongst the grass grow the Stars of Bethlehem, to remind us, as tradition has it, that hard by on Ararat--beyond question the great centre of Chaldean Star-worship--the wise men were appointed to watch for the appearance of a sign in the heavens, and that thence they started in quest of the place "where the young child lay." Tulips also abound; if we may credit the legend, they had their origin in the Armenian town of Erzeroom, springing from the life-blood of Ferdad when he threw himself from the rocks in despair at a false alarm of the death of his beloved Shireen.