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“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!”

There was a malicious squeakiness in this utterance,–of course it came from that envious Miss Dormouse, who was forever peeping out of her habitation in the hedge.

“What a beautiful rose!” cried the poet, and leaping over the old stone-wall he plucked the rose from the mother-tree,–yes, the poet bore away this very rose who had hoped to be the poet’s bride.

Then the rose-tree wept bitterly, and so did her other daughters; the south wind wailed, and the old hoptoad gave three croaks so dolorous that if you had heard them you would have said that his heart was truly broken. All were sad,–all but the envious dormouse, who chuckled maliciously, and said it was no more than they deserved.

The thrush saw the poet bearing the rose away, yet how could the fluttering little creature hope to prevail against the cruel invader? What could he do but twitter in anguish? So there are tragedies and heartaches in lives that are not human.

As the poet returned to the city he wore the rose upon his breast. The rose was happy, for the poet spoke to her now and then, and praised her loveliness, and she saw that her beauty had given him an inspiration.

“The rose despised my brother! Aha, aha, foolish rose,–but she shall wither!”

It was the breeze that spake; far away from the lake in the quiet valley its voice was very low, but the rose heard and trembled.

“It’s a lie,” cried the rose. “I shall not die. The poet loves me, and I shall live forever upon his bosom.”

Yet a singular faintness–a faintness never felt before–came upon the rose; she bent her head and sighed. The heat–that was all–was very oppressive, and here at the entrance to the city the tumult aroused an aggravating dust. The poet seemed suddenly to forget the rose. A carriage was approaching, and from the carriage leaned a lady, who beckoned to the poet. The lady was very fair, and the poet hastened to answer her call. And as he hastened the rose fell from his bosom into the hot highway, and the poet paid no heed. Ascending into the carriage with the lady (I am sure she must have been a princess!) the poet was whirled away, and there in the stifling dust lay the fainting rose, all stained and dying.

The sparrows flew down and pecked at her inquisitively; the cruel wagons crushed her beneath their iron wheels; careless feet buffeted her hither and thither. She was no longer a beautiful rose; no, nor even a reminiscence of one,–simply a colorless, scentless, ill-shapen mass.

But all at once she heard a familiar voice, and then she saw familiar eyes. The voice was tender and the eyes were kindly.

“O honest thrush,” cried the rose, “is it you who have come to reproach me for my folly?”

“No, no, dear rose,” said the thrush, “how should I speak ill to you? Come, rest your poor head upon my breast, and let me bear you home.”

“Let me rather die here,” sighed the rose, “for it was here that my folly brought me. How could I go back with you whom I never so much as smiled upon? And do they not hate and deride me in the valley? I would rather die here in misery than there in shame!”

“Poor, broken flower, they love you,” urged the thrush. “They grieve for you; let me bear you back where the mother-tree will shade you, and where the south wind will nurse you–for–for he loves you.”

So the thrush bore back the withering rose to her home in the quiet valley.

“So she has come back, has she?” sneered the dormouse. “Well, she has impudence, if nothing else!”

“She was pretty once,” said the old hoptoad; “but she lost her opportunity when I made up my mind to go wooing a certain glossy damsel in the hedge.”

The rose-tree reached out her motherly arms to welcome her dying daughter, and she said: “Rest here, dear one, and let me rock you to repose.”

It was evening in the quiet valley now. Where was the south wind that he came not with his wooing? He had flown to the North, for that day he had heard the spring-time’s voice a-calling, and he went in answer to its summons. Everything was still. “Chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp,” piped the three crickets, and forthwith the fairy boy and the elf-prince danced from their habitations. Their little feet tinkled over the clover and the daisies.

“Hush, little folk,” cried the rose-tree. “Do not dance to-night,–the rose is dying.”

But they danced on. The rose did not hear them; she heard only the voice of the thrush, who perched in the linden yonder, and, with a breaking heart, sung to the dying flower.