362 THE PATHOS OF THE ROSE IN POETRY 



From love and love's unrest ; 



But if the wanton gaze 



Of amorous lover chance on her to turn, 



If she but hear his sighs that yearn, 



She opens out her heart 



And to her tender bosom takes love in ; 



Then should shame hide her smart, 



Or fear her will restrain, 



The child in speechless pain 



Through too much longing must decline and part. 



Thus beauty fades, if the fire burneth long ; 



And time's delay doth work her grievous wrong. 



The extreme subtlety and rhetorical minuteness with which 

 this image is wrought somewhat impair its pictorial power. 

 But we must remember that this effect was calculated for an 

 audience sensitive to the cadences of rhythmical declamation 

 in the age which had invented modern music. For them 

 'the linked sweetness long drawn out' of Guarini's verbal 

 melody had a pecular charm. In order to show how poets 

 can employ similar natural suggestions to point opposite 

 lessons, let us set Guarini's * all discoloured ' rose beside 

 Shakespeare's 



Pale primroses, 



That die unmarried ere they can behold 

 Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady 

 Most incident to maids. 



Finally, notice how Shakespeare puts the central thought 

 of Guarini, when he chooses, into a single phrase : 



She never told her love, 

 But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, 

 Feed on her damask cheek. 



Here the word damask brings the rose before us, as a little 

 earlier in Twelfth-Night the Duke gives the old analogy 

 between the rose and woman's beauty in a couplet : 



For women are as roses, whose fair flower, 

 Being once displayed, doth fall that very hour. 



