The Legend of the Bleeding-heart | Page 4

they bloomed, a strange, strange
flower, for on every stem hung a row of little bleeding hearts.

One day the Princess Olga, seeing them from her window, went down
to them in wonderment.
"What do you here?" she cried, for in her forest life she'd learned all
speech of bird and beast and plant.
"We bloom for love's sweet sake," they answered. "We have sprung
from the old Flax-spinner's gift--the necklace thou didst break and
scatter. From her heart's best blood she gave it, and her heart still
bleeds to think she is forgotten."
Then they began to tell the story of the old dame's sacrifices, all the
seventy times seven that she had made for the sake of the maiden, and
Olga grieved as she listened, that she could have been so ungrateful.
Then she brought the Prince to hear the story of the strange, strange
flowers, and when he had heard, together they went to the lowly
cottage and fetched the old Flax-spinner to the castle, there to live out
all her days in ease and contentment.
"See now," she whispered to the Oak at parting, but sturdily he held his
ground, persisting, "Thou wouldst have been forgotten, save for that
miracle of bloom."
_And still the flower we call BLEEDING-HEART blooms on by
cottage walls and castle gardens, to waken all the world to grateful
memories. And ever it doth bring to mind the lonely hearts that bleed
because they are forgotten, and all they sacrificed for love's sweet sake,
to give us happiness._

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