Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/33

Rh so dearly during His life on earth. With Her thin, white, kind fingers She gently caresses the souls of children, the modest daisies, gold-cups, snow-drops, veronicas and the fairy spheres of dandelions. Boundless is her bounty, for it extends over them all: the daffodils, those beautiful love-flowers, the proud and passionate roses, the conceited peonies, the orchids, so terrible in their strange beauty, the bitter, fiery poppies, the tuberoses and hyacinths, that spread their heavy odors around the death bed. She sends bright maidenly dreams to lilies-of-the-valley, violets and mignonettes. And to the plain wild-flowers, the souls of ordinary toilers, wearied with the day's labor, She sends profound, restful sleep.

And She visits also the far-away corners of the garden, wildly overgrown with thorny, monstrous cactuses, greenish ferns, intoxicating hops, and the creeping, graveyard ivy, and to them all, despairing of joy on earth, disappointed in life, sorrowful, and grieving, gloomily hastening to meet death, She grants moments of complete forgetfulness, without dreams, without memories.

And in the morning, when amidst the gold and crimson dawn, the triumphant sun, ever burning with the fire of victory, begins to rise, the Holy Virgin lifts Her clear eyes towards Heaven and says:

"Be thou blessed, O Creator, who exhibits to us the sign of His greatness. Be blessed all His creation, too. Be blessed the sacred eternal maternity of the world. For ever and ever."

And the flowers send their reply in scarcely audible whisper:

"Amen."

And like holy incense their aromatic breath rises upward. And the bright face of the sun trembles, reflected in many-colored rays from each dew-drop.

On this night, too, the Holy Virgin walks through Her garden. But sad is Her beauteous face, lowered are the lashes of her bright eyes, powerless hang her hands along the folds of her blue chiton. Terrible visions float before Her: red fields and pastures, still reeking with blood; burnt homes and churches; violated women, tortured children; mounds and mountains of corpses under which moan the dying; groans, curses, blasphemy that breaks through the death rattle and the cries; mutilated bodies, withered breasts, fields of battle black with ravens...

Oppressive silence, as before a thunder-storm, overhangs the world. The air is perfectly motionless. But the flowers tremble