s own vague sense that it is but their tool, their
ladder, their grappling-iron, to excuse it. Still--I know well what you
mean; the man who works for mankind works for a taskmaster who makes
bitter every hour of his life only to forget him with the instant of his
death; he is ever rolling the stone of human nature upward toward purer
heights, to see it recoil and rush down into darkness and bloodshed. I
know----"

_A PROVENCE ROSE._

Flowers are like your poets: they give ungrudgingly, and, like all
lavish givers, are seldom recompensed in kind.

We cast all our world of blossom, all our treasure or fragrance, at the
feet of the one we love; and then, having spent ourselves in that too
abundant sacrifice, you cry, "A yellow, faded thing! to the dust-hole
with it!" and root us up violently, and fling us to rot with the refuse
and offal; not remembering the days when our burden of beauty made
sunlight in your darkest places, and brought the odours of a lost
paradise to breathe over your bed of fever.

Well, there is one consolation. Just so likewise do you deal with your
human wonder-flower of genius.

* * *

I sighed at my square open pane in the hot, sulphurous mists of the
street, and tried to see the stars and could not. For, between me and
the one small breadth of sky which alone the innumerable roofs left
visible, a vintner had hung out a huge gilded imperial crown as a sign
on his roof-tree; and the crown, with its sham gold turning black in the
shadow, hung between me and the planets.

I knew that there must be many human souls in a like plight with
myself, with the light of heaven blocked from them by a gilded tyranny,
and yet I sighed, and sighed, and sighed, thinking of the white pure
stars of Provence throbbing in the violet skies.

A rose is hardly wiser than a poet, you see: neither rose nor poet will
be comforted, and be content to dwell in darkness because a crown of
tinsel swings on high.

* * *

Ah! In the lives of you who have wealth and leisure we, the flowers, are
but one thing among many: we have a thousand rivals in your porcelains,
your jewels, your luxuries, your intaglios, your mosaics, all your
treasures of art, all your baubles of fancy. But in the lives of the
poor we are alone: we are all the art, all the treasure, all the grace,
all the beauty of outline, all the purity of hue that they possess:
often we are all their innocence and