July 1, 1867.] 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



145 



THE FEAST OF KOSES. 



Crop the gay rose's vermeil bloom 



And waft its spoils, a sweet perfume 



In incense to the skies. 



Ogilvie. 



F all the flowers 

 that have ever 

 adorned the face 

 of the earth none 

 has furnished to 

 the poet more 

 delicate similes 

 than the Rose. 

 -Ks>><^ The poet in return 

 has supplied the romance of its 

 birth. Sir John Maundeville 

 gives one legend of Christian 

 origin ; the Mahometans have 

 another. Writing of Bethlehem, 

 Sir John records that a fair 

 maiden was blamed with wrong, 

 and slandered, and was condemned 

 j>^-^^-^__ ; to be burnt at that place, and as 

 the fire began to burn about her, 

 she made her prayers, that as truly as she was not 

 guilty it might be made known to all men; and 

 that thereafter she entered into the fire, and imme- 

 diately the fire was extinguished, and the faggots 

 that were burning became red rose-bushes, and 

 those that were not kindled became white rose- 

 bushes, full of roses. And these were the first 

 rose-trees and roses, both white and red, that ever 

 any man saw. On the other hand, it is reported 

 that the Turk can by no means endure to see the 

 leaves of roses fall to the ground, because that 

 some of them have dreamed that the first or most 

 ancient rose did spring of the blood ot Venus ; and 

 others of the Mahometans say that it sprang of the 

 sweat of Mahomet. If we are to believe the said 

 poets, this flower is beloved of the gods as well as 

 men, for Cupid was by them adorned with a wreath 

 of roses. 

 No. 31. 



The rose is the honor and beautie of flowers, 

 The rose is the care and the love of the spring, 



The rose is the pleasure of th' 'eavenly powres. 

 The boy of faire Venus, Cythera's darling-, 



Doth wrap his head round with garlands of rose, 

 When to the daunces of the Graces he goes. 



Anacreon. 



Whether the roses of Abraham were believed by 

 the Ghebers to be the first that had bloomed on 

 earth, or not, the romance deserves remembrance 

 in company with those we have already narrated. 

 "The Ghebers believe," says Tavernier, "that 

 when Abraham, their great prophet, was thrown 

 into the fire, by order of Nimrod, the flame turned 

 instantly into a bed of roses, where the child sweetly 

 reposed." This legend is alluded to in "Lalla 

 Rookh " by the lines, — 



When pitying heaven to roses turned, 

 The death flames that beneath him burned. 



Old Gerarde, in his " Herbal," apologizes for the 

 company in which he placed such an august flower 

 as the Rose, in his own quaint style. " The plant 

 of roses, though it be a shrub full of prickles, yet 

 it had beene more fit and convenient to have placed 

 it with the most glorious flowers of the worlde, than 

 to insert the same among base and thorny shrubs ; 

 for the Rose doth deserve the chiefest and most 

 principal place among all flowers whatsoever, being 

 not only esteemed for his beautie, vertues, and his 

 fragrant and odoriferous smell, but also because it 

 is the honor and ornament of our English scepter, 

 as by the conjunction appeereth in the uniting 

 of those two most royal houses of Lancaster and 

 York." 



The Oriental poets especially gave the pre- 

 ference to the Rose above all other flowers. 

 The two greatest of the Persian poets, Hafiz and 



H 



