There the beautiful rose, faithfully reproduced, differing but little from its actual appearance, with its own hue matched royal purple and dyed the ground blood-red. There outclassing its fellow-flowers was the delightful, fragrant bloom of Adonis and the noble lily with its silvery sheen enriched fertile field and valleys deep.
There the thyme, aspiring to rival the rest of the flowers, entering the lists with an appearance different from them, vied with the companionable flower of Narcissus, and the droll streams laughed with quiet murmur. The columbine, with its flower-bearing appearance, shone forth as the light-bearer of all flowers. The little violet, telling of Spring's leisure-time, a pictured face full of attraction, bestarred the arbutus. Here Nature had ordered to come to life that species of flower which had a leaf with a king's name, yet was never to feel the writer's thumb. These are the riches of Spring and her garb, the beauty of earth and its stars; these the picture brought forth by its powers, giving an image of flowers by a skillfully deceptive art. Spring, lavish in favours, ennobles the meadows with these garments of flowers in bloom. These meadows give linen, these others give purple when the zephyr's right hand has clothed them.
Alan of Lille, 1116 – 1202.
Trans. James J. Sheridan.
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