ROSE-BUSH. 



" And if at times a transient breeze 



Break the blue crystal of the seas^, 



Or sweep one blossom from the trees. 



How welcome is each gentle air 



That wakes and wafts the odours there ! 



For there — the Rose o'er crag or vale. 



Sultana of the Nightingale, 



The maid for whom his melody. 



His thousand songs are heard on high. 



Blooms blushing to her lover's tale : 



His queen, the garden queen, his Rose, 



Unbent by winds, unchill'd by snows. 



Far from the winters of the west. 



By every breeze and season blest. 



Returns the sweets by nature given 



In softest incense back to heaven ; 



And grateful yields that smiling sky. 



Her fairest hue, and fragrant sigh." 



Lord Byron's Giaour. 



We must not dismiss the subject of the Rose, without 

 recalling to the minds of our readers those beautiful lines 

 from Milton : 



" Eve separate he spies. 



Veiled in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood. 

 Half spied, so thick the roses blushing round 

 About her glowed ; oft stooping to support 

 Each flower of tender stalk, whose head, though gay 

 Carnation, purple, azure, or speck'd with gold. 

 Hung drooping unsustained ; them she upstays 

 Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while 

 Herself, though fairest unsupported flower. 

 From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh." 



Chaucer delights in garlanding his heads with roses : 

 not the daisy itself delights him more than a garland of 

 flowers ; Roses in particular. In the Flower and the Leaf 

 he has crowns of Roses, laurel, oak, woodbine, &c. and 

 of all various flowers mingled together, he perfectly revels 

 in them : 



" And all they werin, aftir ther degrees 

 Chappelets new, or made of laurir green ; 



Y 2 



