Rosa this paucity — so singular compared with the 

 Mystica. R ose f Poetry in our English speech, from 

 Chaucer's 'Rose of Rhone' to Mr. Yeats's 

 ' Rose on the Rood of Time,' loved and sung 

 through a thousand years. Such paucity does 

 not necessarily mean that only a few poets 

 casually alluded to this supreme flower, and 

 that it was unnoticed or unloved of the many. 

 Doubtless rose-chaplets were woven for lovers, 

 and children made coronals, and at mourning 

 ceremonies and marriage festivals these flowers 

 were strewn. The very fact that Sappho 

 called the rose the queen of flowers showed 

 that it was distinguished from and admired 

 among even the violets, pre-eminently the 

 flowers of Athens. That she likened a young 

 maiden to a rose is as indicative as when an 

 Arab poet likens his love to a delicate green 

 palm, or as when a northern poet speaks of 

 her as a pine-tree swaying in the wind or a 

 wave dancing on the sea. 



Then, again, the Rose would not have been 

 consecrated to Venus, as an emblem of 

 beauty : to Eros, as an emblem of love : to 

 Aurora, as an emblem of Youth : and to 

 Harpocrates, as an emblem of silence : if this 

 symbolic usage were not such as would seem 

 fit and natural. That roses, too, were in 

 general demand is evident alone from their far- 



342 



