Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/416

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384
HANS ANDERSEN’S FAIRY TALES

was still in her own warm Asia. Then footsteps approached; strangers, such as the rose had seen in her dream, came by, and among them was a poet from the north; he plucked the rose, pressed a kiss upon her fresh mouth, and carried her away to the home of the clouds and the northern lights. Like a mummy, the flower now rests in his “Iliad,” and, as in her dream, she hears him say, as he opens the book, “Here is a rose from the grave of Homer.”