18 THE ROSE GARDEN. 



Upon her head a crimson coronet, 

 With damask Roses and daffodillies set: 



Bay-leaves hetween, 



And primroses green, 

 Embellish the sweet violet. 



In the next verse lie speaks of 



The red Rose medled with the white yfere. 



In the " Fairy Queen," especially in the Second Book, he makes several allusions 

 to it, and also in the Epithalamion. 



Shakspeare often introduces the Rose in his writings. In the following pas- 

 sage he compares the extinction of life to the plucking of a Rose : 



When I have plucked thy Rose, 



I cannot give it vital growth again : 



It needs must wither : 



I '11 smell it on the tree. [Othello, Act 5. 



In one of his Sonnets, the comparisons of the greatest English poet are obvi- 

 ously so much to the advantage of our favourite, that I cannot help inserting it. 



how much more doth beauty beauteous seem 



By that sweet ornament which truth doth give ! 



The Rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem 



For that sweet odour which doth in it live. 



The canker blooms have full as deep a dye 



As the perfumed tincture of the Roses ; 



Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly, 



"When summer's breath their masked buds discloses : 



But, for their virtue only is their show, 



They live unwooed, and unrespected fade ; — 



Die to themselves. Sweet Roses do not so : 



Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made. 



And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, 



When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth. 



I have made the above quotations to shew that the Rose was not unregarded 



by the early English poets ; but were I to pursue this plan of quoting all the 



agreeable things which our poets have written of it, that matter Avould occupy 



the whole volume ; for who among them has not heaped upon it the riches 



of his fancy ? 



In every love-song Roses bloom. 



From the allusion of Chaucer, it is evident the Rose was a favourite flower, at 

 least among the poets in England, some centuries since ; and this I should have 

 thought a sufficient passport to public favour. That they did not owe their love 

 and respect for this flower to the existence of superior garden varieties, or to an 

 interest displayed in their cultivation by their countrymen, will, I think, soon be 

 stifficiently evident. But the wild forms of Roses are beautiful ; and they probably 

 gave rise to these effusions. Or the poets might owe their veneration for 



