"At first they behaved themselves in a quite orderly manner. Modestly they stepped along and carried their tails on their arms like trains, as the devil grandmother, who sets great value on propriety, had taught them. But it did not last long; they became frolicsome, turned wheels and somersaults, and shrieked at the same time like real imps. The beautiful moon, who was looking kindly out of a window in Heaven, they derided, thrust out their tongues and made faces (German: long noses) at her, and finally began to pluck up the flowers which grew on the meadow and throw them down on the earth. Now the angels grew frightened and bitterly repented letting their evil guests into Heaven. They begged and threatened, but the devils cared for nothing, and kept on in their frolic more madly. Then, in terror, the angels waked up St. Peter and penitently confessed to him what they had done. He smote his hands together over his head when he saw the mischief which the imps had wrought. 'March in!' thundered he, and the little ones, with drooping wings, crept through the gate into Heaven. Then St. Peter called a few sturdy angels. They collected the imps and took them where they belonged.
"The little angels did not escape punishment. Three Sundays in succession they were not allowed in front of Heaven's gate, and, if they were taken to walk, they were obliged to first unbuckle their wings and lay aside their halos; and it is a great disgrace for an angel to go about without wings and halo.
"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."