Who knows but that the orchids feel stifled by the artificial
heat in your conservatories and hopelessly long for a glimpse
of their own Southern skies?

The ideal lover of flowers is he who visits them in their native
haunts, like Taoyuenming [all celebrated Chinese poets and
philosophers], who sat before a broken bamboo fence in
converse with the wild chrysanthemum, or Linwosing, losing
himself amid mysterious fragrance as he wandered in the
twilight among the plum-blossoms of the Western Lake.
'Tis said that Chowmushih slept in a boat so that his dreams
might mingle with those of the lotus. It was the same spirit
which moved the Empress Komio, one of our most renowned
Nara sovereigns, as she sang: "If I pluck thee, my hand will
defile thee, O flower! Standing in the meadows as thou art,
I offer thee to the Buddhas of the past, of the present, of
the future."

However, let us not be too sentimental. Let us be less luxurious
but more magnificent. Said Laotse: "Heaven and earth are
pitiless." Said Kobodaishi: "Flow, flow, flow, flow, the current
of life is ever onward. Die, die, die, die, death comes to all."
Destruction faces us wherever we turn. Destruction below and
above, destruction behind and before. Change is the only
Eternal,--why not as welcome Death as Life? They are but
counterparts one of the other,--The Night and Day of Brahma.
Through the disintegration of the old, re-creation becomes
possible. We have worshipped Death, the relentless goddess
of mercy, under many different names. It was the shadow of
the All-devouring that the Gheburs greeted in the fire. It is the