346 THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY 



Quern mulcent aurae, firmat sol, educat imber ; 

 Multi ilium pueri, mult optavere puellse : 

 Idem quom tenui carptus defloruit ungui, 

 Nulli ilium pueri, nullse optavere puellse : 

 Sic virgo dum intacta manet, dum cara suis est, 

 Quom castum amisit pollute corpore florem, 

 Nee pueris jocunda manet, nee cara puellis. 



It will be noticed that Catullus does not specialise the rose. 

 He speaks indifferently of a flower. But when we examine 

 the imitations of these lines by modern poets, we shall see 

 how their instinct appropriated to the rose the honours of 

 the suggestion. I may also point out that the poet dwells 

 only on the fact that a flower, up-growing on its native stalk, 

 nourished into bloom by the powers of nature, is desirable 

 to all who gaze upon it ; but when it has been plucked, the 

 cut flower raises no desire ; and so, Catullus says, it is with 

 maidens also. 



For English readers I will roughly paraphrase these un- 

 translatable hexameters : 



The flower that, closed by garden walls, doth blow, 

 Which no plough wounds, and no rude cattle know, 

 But breezes fan, sun fosters, showers shoot higher, 

 It many lads and many maids desire ; 

 The same, when cropped by cruel hand it fades, 

 No lads at all desire it, nor no maids : 

 E'en so the girl, so long her youth doth last 

 Untouched, on her kind friends affection cast ; 

 But when she stoops to folly, sheds her bloom, 

 For lads, for maids, hath flown her chaste perfume. 



The second of the two classic passages to which I hai 

 referred is an Idyll by Ausonius. This poet, who lived froi 

 309 to 392 A.D., was half pagan and half Christian. Hij 

 genius floated in the atmosphere of the decaying Romai 

 Empire, between influences of the past and future. But 

 what his religious creed was does not greatly signify. 

 As a writer, he expressed, at the latest close of antiqi 

 culture, something of the spirit which appears in mediaev* 

 and which pervades modern literature, the spirit of sympathy 



