MID-SUMMER. 



The hills are sweet with the brier-rose. — Whittier. 



Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a brier. — Edmund Spencer. 



As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again. — Keats. 



What mortal knows Whence comes the tint and odor of the rose. 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 



The rose saith in the dewy morn, 



I am most fair ; 

 Yet all my loveliness is born 



Upon a thorn. — Christina G. Rossette 



The roses grew so thickly, I never saw the thorn. 

 Nor deemed the stem was prickly until my hand was torn. 



— Peter Spencer. 



Gather ye rosebuds while you may, 



Old Time is still a-flying ; 

 And this same flower that smiles to-day 



To-morrow will be dying. — Herrick. 



If this fair rose offend thy sight, 



Placed in thy bosom bare, 

 'Twill blush to find itself less white, 



And turn Lancastrian there. — Unknown. 



I know a bank where the wild thyme blows. 

 Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows, 

 Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, 

 With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine. — Shakespeare. 



The rose is fairest when 'tis budding new. 



And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears ; 



The rose is sweetest washed with morning dew, 



And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears. — ScoTT. 



My life is like the summer rose 



That opens to the morning sky. 

 But ere the shades of evening close, 



Is scattered on the ground — to die ! 

 Yet on the rose's humble bed 



The sweetest dews of night are shed. 



Richard Henry Wilde. 



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