Our horses come up to it, and we dismount. Some
of the party go in to sleep - I go out to climb a neighboring peak. At
the foot of this peak lay a wreath of snow, soiled and dirty, as
half-melted snow always is; but lying amid the green grass and
luxuriant flowers, it had a strange air. It seemed a little spot of
death in the green lap of rejoicing life - like that death-spot which
often lies in the human heart - among all seeming flowers, cold and
cheerless, unwarmed by the sunbeam, and unmelted by the ray that
unfolds thousands of blooms around.
Now, I thought, I have read of Alpine flowers leaning their cheeks on
the snows. I wonder if any flowers grow near enough to that snow to
touch it. I mean to go and see. So I went; there, sure enough, my
little fringed purple bell, to which I have given the name of
"suspirium," was growing, not only close to the snow, but in it.
Thus God's grace shining steadily on the waste places of the human
heart, brings up heavenward sighings and aspirations which pierce
through the cold snows of affliction, and tell that there is yet life
beneath.
I climbed up the grassy sides of the peak, flowers to the very top.
There I sat down and looked.
