Flowers Symbol Analysis

The sun, though it had dropped far down the sky, still had the heat of day and the forest blazed and quivered with its beams. Blossoms of brilliant hue were twice as beautiful as they found their reflections in the water. All along the way the land cried out the new year’s growth. Reds, yellows, greens were still pals with spring, but under the sun’s powerful rays they would soon intensify to the fullness of summer’s coloring. More and more as the afternoon wore on, they passed places where the land had been subdued. Furrows had been made in it by tribesmen preparing it for tillage, and stone encampments instead of rude huts could be seen on the hilltops.

He watched swallows swooping in their flight, feeling as if he were one of them; his eyes dwelt on a tree that was a mass of white blossom.

It had been spring, too, when he had been free before […]. Yet that had been a lifetime ago; another life, perhaps, for now his life was beginning again. He was almost sixty years old and he was ready to live. He flexed his muscles; they were strong. He raised his head from the blossoming tree to the blue sky above and the thought of Moses came into his mind, of Moses who stood upon Mount Nebo seeing with his eyes the land that his feet might not tread upon.

“‘And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died.’” Amos spoke the words as reverently as if he were reading them from the open book […]. “So there’s time for Amos, too.”

Violet would not trust in the back of the cart her treasured plants—the root of lilac, the japonica seedling, the lily-of-the-valley pips, her yellow tea rose. She had heard stories of people going off to live wilderness lives in the great country that had one edge on the Atlantic and reached no one knew how far. And she had been fearful until Amos read to hear from the Bible that the wilderness would blossom like the rose; then she had felt less fearful. But Violet had her own feeling about the Bible words. Though she could not read them for herself she knew that there must be a willingness in the heart of man to work with them. So she saw to it that she had with her a bit of loveliness that she might help in the blossoming of their wilderness.

However, by the second year when people came to their call for their leather and paid Amos Fortune in cash or kind, his stock of supplies increased and he added another room to the cabin and more comfort to their living. The iron kettle that stood half-hidden in the ashes of the hearth and held the Fortune savings began to be musical with the coins that were collecting in it. Amos did not know how long it would be before the contents of the kettle would be sufficient for him to buy his own piece of land. His soul might long for heaven but his heart longed for cleared fields and a wider brook […]. And a plot of earth near the house where Violet’s flowers might grow freely. He said little about his dream but he nourished it in his heart as the best place for a dream to grow.

One night in early November Polly asked Amos to help her sit up. He put his arms around her and held her up. She was so light that he felt if he held a flower on its stalk it could be no heavier. She held out her hands, resting her right hand in Violet’s that were worn and coarse with the care she had given others, and her left hand in Celyndia’s that were supple and strong. Her eyes she kept on Amos. Peace dwelt in her face, a smile hovered over her lips, and for the first time she seemed to be seeing clearly those who were close to her. Her gaze that had always been so far away had come near at last. A small shudder passed over her body. She sat up very straight for a moment, even without the aid of Amos’ arms; then she fell back into his arms.