"But the affair resulted in some good, after all. The flowers which the devils had torn up and thrown upon the earth took root and increased from year to year. To be sure, the star-flower lost much of its heavenly beauty, but it is still always lovely to look at, with its golden-yellow disk, and its silvery white crown of rays. "And because of its Heavenly origin, a quite remarkable power resides in it. If a maiden, whose mind harbours a doubt, pulls off, one by one, the white petals of the flower-star, whispering meanwhile a certain sentence at the fall of the last little petal, she is quite sure of what she desires to know." The very name _Aster_ is suggestive of star-origin and recalls the lines of Longfellow:-- "Spake full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine." The reference seems to be to Friedrich Wilhelm Carové, of Coblentz, in whose _Märchen ohne Ende_, a forget-me-not is spoken of as "twinkling as brightly as a blue star on the green firmament of earth" (390. II. 149). Another contribution to floral astrology is the brief poem of H. M. Sweeny in the _Catholic World_ for November, 1892:-- "The Milky Way is the foot-path Of the martyrs gone to God; Its stars are the flaming jewels To show us the way they trod. "The flowers are stars dropped lower, Our daily path to light, In daylight to lead us upward As those jewels do at night." Flower-oracles are discussed in another section, and the "language of flowers" of which the poet tells,-- "In Eastern lands they talk in flowers, And they tell in a garland their loves and cares; Each blossom that blooms in their garden bower On its leaves a mystic language bears," must be studied in Dyer, Friend, and Folkard, or in the various booklets which treat of this entertaining subject.