Page:Frank Owen - Rare Earth, 1931.djvu/223

 we spoil, some we pluck, some we trample beneath our feet. But each flower destroyed brings us one flower nearer to the ultimate end of all things. The wise man watches carefully over the flowers for they alone make life worth living. Without flowers all life on earth would cease to be. Laughter would die out The sun itself would grow dim. The stars would fade. For the sky is a mirror and stars are only the reflections of flowers."

And Lotus Blossom, where was she? Had that rare personality ceased to be or had her body crumpled to dust in the soil like old flower petals. Did she live again in this garden? Was there some flower that was in sooth the ghost of Lotus Blossom even as Hung Long Tom had written years before in his poem, "The Mystic Rose?" What use life, beauty, love if they are finite, fading away like shadows before the dawn? Is not beauty itself immortal? Can the perfume of a flower ever vanish? Perhaps it goes on and on, up to the heights, to the very stars. Oh, the awful riddle of existence? What is the reason for anything?