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