ROSE-BUSH. 321 



" And all is ecstasy, for now 

 The valley holds its feast of roses ; 

 That joyous time, when pleasures pour 

 Profusely round, and in their shower 

 Hearts open, like the season's rose, — 

 The flowret of a hundred leaves. 

 Expanding while the dew-fall flows, 

 And every leaf its balm receives !" 



Lalla Rookh. 



Persia is the very land of Roses : 



" On my first entering this bower of fairy land," say Sir Robert 

 Kerr Porter, speaking of the garden of one of the royal palaces of Persia, 

 '*■ I was struck with the appearance of two rose-trees full fourteen feet 

 high, laden with thousands of flowers, in every degree of expansion, 

 and of a bloom and delicacy of scent that imbued the whole atmosphere 

 with exquisite perfume. Indeed, I believe that in no country in the 

 world does the rose grow in such perfection as in Persia ; in no country 

 is it so cultivated and prized by the natives. Their gardens and courts 

 are crowded by its plants, their rooms ornamented with vases filled 

 with its gathered bunches, and every bath strewed with the full-blown 



flowers plucked with the ever replenished stems But in 



this delicious garden of Negaaristan, the eye and the smell are not the 

 only senses regaled by the presence of the rose. The ear is enchanted 

 by the wild and beautiful notes of multitudes of nightingales, whose 

 warblings seem to increase in melody and softness with the unfolding 

 of their favorite flowers. Here indeed the stranger is more power- 

 fully reminded, that he is in the genuine country of the nightingale 

 and the rose." — Persia in Miniature, vol. 3. 



Lord Byron has taken advantage of the various fictions 

 and customs connected with the Rose ; and has made it 

 spring and flourish over the tomb of Zuleika : while the 

 nightingale soothes his beloved with his sweet and plaintive 

 notes : 



" A single rose is shedding there 

 Its lonely lustre meek and pale : 

 It looks as planted by despair — 



So white, so faint — the shghtest gale 

 Might whirl the leaves on high ; 



And yet though storms and blight assail, 



Y 



