Lady Iron-Heels and her sister-in-law took a swig of whisky from the jug under the table, and lifted up their hoes from the floor. The boy whimpered for a drink. They said: “Wait till you are a man.” All three climbed the hill.
Lady Iron-Heels was the last to go over the ridge. She saw me gather buds from both those bushes by the spring. She made a gesture of salute with her hoe.
I never travelled that way again. I passed by quickly; therefore I had a glimpse of what she was intended to be. “He that loseth his life shall find it.” I see her many a time when I am looking on scattered rose-leaves. She was a woman, God’s chief rose for man. She was scorned and downtrodden, but radiant still. I am only saying that she wore the face of Beauty when Beauty rises above circumstance.
The buds that I had gathered did not fall to pieces till I had passed by Daniel Boone’s old trail on through Cumberland Gap, on over big hill Kentucky into the Blue Grass. On the way I wrote this, their poor memorial, the Canticle of the Rose:—
It is an article of my creed that the petals of this flower of which we speak are a medicine, that they can almost heal a mortal wound.
The rose is so young of face and line, she appears so casually and humbly, we forget she is an ancient physician.
Yet so much tradition is wrapped around her stalk, it is strange she is not a mummy. Her ashes can be found in the tombs of the Pharaohs, in everlasting companionship with the ashes of the lotus and the papyrus plant. Her dust travels on every desert wind.
No love-song can do without her.
No soldier and no priest can scorn her. There were the Wars of the Roses. And there was a Rose in Sharon. Our wandering brother Dante found a great rose in Paradise.
There are white roses, sweet ghosts under the pine. There are yellow roses, little suns in the shadow. But the normal bloom is red, flushed with foolish ardors, laughing, shaking off the gossamer years. She remembers Love, but not too well, if love is pain. There is no yesterday that can daunt her and keep her dear heart-laughter down. In springtime her magic petals bring God to the weary and give Heaven’s strength to the wavering of heart.