"SWEET SUMMER BUDS" 155 



marks, or spots will be seen in it. The smell is of a 

 weak Damask Rose scent." 



This rose recalls the old song of a "Lover to His 

 Lancastrian Mistress," on handing her a white rose : 



If this fair rose offend thy sight, 



Placed in thy bosom bare, 

 'T will blush to find itself less white, 



And turn Lancastrian there, 



But if thy ruby lip it spy, 



As kiss it thou mayst deign, 

 With envy pale 't will lose its dye, 



And Yorkish turn again. 



In his play of "King Henry VI," which passes dur- 

 ing the Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare introduces 

 the noted scene in the Temple Garden, London, 

 where the emblem of the Yorkists (a white rose) 

 and that of the Lancastrians (a red rose) is chosen. 

 Richard Plantagenet plucks a white rose and the 

 Earl of Somerset a red rose from rose-bushes that 

 are still growing and blooming in the same spot, as 

 they did when Shakespeare imagined the scene in 

 "King Henry VI." 1 



In Shakespeare's day the rose was enormously 

 cultivated. In the gardens of Ely Place, the home 

 of Queen Elizabeth's dashing lord chancellor, 



'Part I, Act II, Scene IV. 



