Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/231

133 the flaunting banners of other days;—and the noisy jack-daws and downy, spectre-like owls, are the only disturbers of the utter silence, where formerly

Or where the solemn chant of the mass, and the far-heard vesper-bell told that many a "Friar of orders grey" there bent in "prayer and penance oft."

In no place or season can the triumph of nature over art be so vividly expressed. The proud fabric of man's ambition, toil, and ingenuity, totters and decays; while the frailest of 's works, the delicate flower, whose individual life is but a day, springs, ever renewed, in undiminished vigour.