The Land of the Blue Flower

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

"Something strange has happened," King Amor answered. "I have felt something I have not felt before. I was riding my horse around the field on the plateau and he saw something which he refused to pass. It was a young leopard watching us from a tree. My horse reared and snorted. He would not listen to me, but backed and wheeled around. I tried in vain to persuade him, and suddenly, when I saw I could not make him obey me, this strange new feeling rushed through all my body. I grew hot and knew my face was scarlet, my heart beat faster and my blood seemed to boil in my veins. I shouted out harsh, ugly sounds—I forgot that all things are brothers—I lifted my hand and clenched it and struck my horse again and again. I loved him no longer, I felt that he no longer loved me. I am hot and wearied and heavy from it still. I feel no more joy. Was it pain I felt? I have never felt pain and do not know. Was it pain?"

"It was a worse thing," answered the Ancient One. "It was anger. When a man is overcome by anger he has a poisoned fever. He loses his strength, he loses his power over himself and over others, he throws away time in which he might have gained the end he most desires. THERE IS NO TIME FOR ANGER IN THE WORLD."

So King Amor learned the uselessness of anger, for they sat long upon the battlements while the Ancient One told him how its poison worked in the veins and weakened the strongest man until he was made a fool. That night Amor lay under the sky looking at his myriad brothers, the stars, and drawing calm from them.

"If you lie through the night upon the battlements and think only of the stillness and the stars you will forget your anger and its poison will die away. If you put into your mind a beautiful thought it will take the place of the evil one. There is no room for darkness in the mind of him who thinks only of the stars." This had been said to him by the Ancient One.

Upon the plateau at the foot of the crag on which the castle stood there were marvelous walled gardens. The sad young Queen of the first King Mordreth had planted them, and after her death they had been left to run wild. Since the baby King Amor had been brought to the mountain top the Ancient One and his servitor had made them bloom again. As soon as he was old enough to hold a small spade Amor had worked in the beds. All things grew for him as if his touch were a spell; birds and bees and butterflies flocked round him as he labored. He knew what the bees hummed and where they flew to load themselves with honey; butterflies lighted upon his hands and taught him strange things. Birds told him of their travels, and brought him seeds from far countries which he planted in his gardens and which bloomed into marvelous flowers. A swallow who loved him very much and who had seen many wonderful lands once brought him a seed from an emperor's secret garden which none but four of his own slaves had ever seen. These slaves had been born in the garden and would never leave it while they lived.

King Amor planted the seed in a pleasaunce of its own. It grew into the most beautiful blue flower the world had ever known. It was of a blue so pure and exquisitely intense that it was rapture to look at it. Its blossoms hung from a tall stem and in its first year it gave a thousand seeds. Each year Amor planted more flowers and each year they grew taller and more wonderful and blossomed a longer time. When the summer wind blew it shook out clouds of delicate fragrance which sometimes floated down the mountain until the wretched dwellers in King Mordreth's land forgot their quarrels and misery and even lifted their heavy heads to inhale it and ask each other what was being done upon the mountain. Each year King Amor gathered the seeds and stored them in an unused tower of his castle.

Taller and stronger he grew and each day wiser and more beautiful. Each plant, each weed, each four-footed thing, each wind, each star of heaven taught him its wonders and its wisdom. His eyes were so marvelous in their straight-glanced splendor that when he looked at a man they seemed to read his soul and command its truth to answer him. He was so powerful that he could break an iron bar in two pieces with his hands.

When he was twenty years old the Ancient One took him up on the battlements, and giving him a strong glass told him to look down upon the capital city on the plain and see what was being done there.

"I see many people gathered in crowds," Amor said, when he had looked for a few moments. "I see bright colors and waving pennants and triumphal arches. It is as if some great ceremony were being prepared for."

"The people are making ready for your coronation," said the Ancient One. "To-morrow you will be led in state down the mountain and acclaimed King. It was to fit you to reign over your kingdom that I taught you to know all the wonders of the world and have shown you that no thing is useless but folly and dishonoring thought. That which you have learned from your brothers here you go down the mountain to teach your brothers there. You will see things which are not beautiful and those which are unclean, but hold high your head when you walk, young King, and never forget the sun, the wind, and the stars."