350 THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY 



Yea, while I speak, the flower with crimson crowned 

 Hath fallen and shed her glories on the ground. 

 So many births, forms, fates with changes fraught, 

 One day begins and one day brings to naught ! 

 Grieve we that flowers should have so short a grace, 

 That Nature shows and steals her gifts apace ? 

 Long as the day, so long the red rose lasts ; 

 Eld following close on youth her beauty blasts : 

 That flower which Phosphor newly-born had known, 

 Hesper returning finds a wrinkled crone : 

 Yet well if, though some brief days past she die, 

 Her life be lengthened through posterity ! 

 Pluck roses, girl, when flower, when youth is new, 

 Mindful the while that thus time flies for you. 



These, then, are the two Latin sources which I wish to 

 bring before the students of rose-literature in modern poetry. 

 One of them is a passage from a marriage song by Catullus, 

 the other an Idyll by Ausonius. I have next to show how, 

 after the revival of letters, they were severally or in combina- 

 tion used by European poets. In this part of my task I shall 

 not seek after exhaustiveness, but shall content myself with 

 such specimens as occur readily to the memory. 



I said that the Greek and Latin poets of a good period 

 rarely used the rose as a symbol of human fragility. This 

 requires some modification. The myths connected with 

 flowers hyacinth, narcissus, anemone are themselves sug- 

 gestive of sadness ; but in these a god's beloved has become 

 a plant which blooms each year with the recurring season. 

 Therefore, this contemplation of the flower derives its senti- 

 ment rather from the promise of continuity and immortality 

 in nature, than from the pathos of temporal decay. The rose, 

 it may be parenthetically observed, in one version of the 

 death of Adonis, was said to have sprung from his blood, 

 the anemone from Aphrodite's tears. 1 



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1 Bion's Lament for Adonis, 64-06. The lines are probably a lat 

 interpolation, 



