The Turquoise Story Book: Stories and Legends of Summer and Nature
General
The Turquoise Story Book: Stories and Legends of Summer and Nature
Nature -- Juvenile literature; Summer -- Juvenile literature
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
it to return to her as the fair youth she had loved; and at last when
its flowers had faded and the stem drooped, the white palace of the
Princess Beautiful was empty and the Princess lay 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 beautiful 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 says:
"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.
MORNING GLORIES
They swing from the garden-trellis
In Ariel-airy ease;
And their aromatic honey
Is sought by the earliest bees.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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