“Edna turned to her pupils and their books, but all day the flowers in the vase on the table prattled of days gone by; of purple sunsets streaming through golden starred acacia boughs; of long, languid, luxurious Southern afternoons dying slowly on beds of heliotrope and jasmine, spicy geraniums and gorgeous pelargoniums; of dewy, delicious summer mornings, for ever and ever past, when standing beside a quivering snowbank of Lamarque roses, she had watched Tamerlane and his gloomy rider go down the shadowy avenue of elms.
“The monotonous hum of the children’s voices seemed thin and strange and far, far off, jarring the sweet bouquet babble; and still as the hours passed, and the winter day waned, the flower Fugue swelled on and on, through the cold and dreary chambers of her heart; now rising stormy and passionate, like a battle-blast, from the deep orange trumpet of a bignonia; and now whispering and sobbing and pleading, from the pearly white lips of hallowed oxalis.”
– St. Elmo by Augusta Jane Evans
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