"Mother," said the rose, "these suitors are pestering me beyond all endurance. How can I have any patience with the south wind, who is forever importuning me with his sentimental sighs and melancholy wheezing? And as for that old hoptoad, Mr. Roughbrown,—why, it is a husband I want, not a father!"
"Prince Beambright pleases you, then?" asked the rose-tree.
"He is a merry, capering fellow," said the daughter, "and so is his friend Dewlove; but I do not fancy either. And as for the thrush who sends you to speak for him,—why, he is quite out of the question, I assure you. The truth is, mother, that I am to fill a higher station than that of bride to any of these simple rustic folk. Am I not more beautiful than any of my companions, and have I not ambitions above all others of my kind?"
"Whom have you seen that you talk so vain-gloriously?" cried the rose-tree in alarm. "What flattery has instilled into you this fatal poison?"
"Have you not seen the poet who comes this way every morning?" asked the rose. "His face is noble, and he sings grandly to the pictures Nature spreads before his eyes. I should be his bride. Some day he will see me; he will bear me away upon his bosom; he will indite to me a poem that shall live forever!"
These words the thrush heard, and his heart sank within him. If his songs that day were not so blithe as usual it was because of the words that the rose had spoken. Yet the thrush sang on, and his song was full of his honest love.
It was the next morning that the poet came that way. He lived in the city, but each day he stole away from the noise and crowd of the city to commune with himself and with Nature in the quiet valley where bloomed the rose-tree, where the thrush sung, and where dwelt the fays and the elves of whom it has been spoken. The sun shone fiercely; withal the quiet valley was cool, and the poet bared his brow to the breeze that swept down the quiet valley from the lake over yonder.
"The south wind loves the rose! Aha, aha, foolish brother to love the rose!"
This was what the breeze said, and the poet heard it. Then his eyes fell upon the rose-tree and upon her blooming daughters.
"The hoptoad loves the rose! Foolish old Roughbrown to love the rose, aha, aha!"