158 THE SHAKESPEARE GARDEN 



Sir Henry Wotton wrote : 



You Violets that first appear, 

 By your pure purple mantles known, 

 Like the proud virgins of the year, 

 As if the Spring were all your own, 

 What are you when the Rose is blown ? 



And Hood sang : 



The Cowslip is a country wench; 



The Violet is a nun; 

 But I will woo the dainty Rose 



The queen of every one. 



And Shelley: 



And the rose, like a nymph to the bath addrest, 

 Which unveiled the depths of her glowing breast, 

 Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air, 

 The soul of her beauty and love laid bare. 



Shelley's "fold after fold" reminds us that Ruskin 

 points out that one of the rose's beauties is that her 

 petals make shadows over and over again of their 

 own loveliness. 



Dr. Forbes Watson has, perhaps, been the most 

 successful of all writers in putting into words the 

 reasons why the rose has such power over mankind : 



"The flower has something almost human about 

 it warm, breathing, soft as the fairest cheek; of 

 white, no longer snowy like the narcissus, but flushed 



