38 The Rose Garden. 



VIRTUE. 



Sweet Day ! so cool, so calm, so bright, 

 The bridal of the earth and sky, 

 The dew shall weep thy fall to-night ; 



For thou must die. 



Sweet Rose ! whose hue, angry and brave, 

 Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, 

 Thy root is ever in its grave ; 



And thou must die. 



Sweet Spring ! full of sweet days and Roses, 

 A box where sweets compacted lie, 

 Thy music shows ye have your closes ; 



And all must die. 

 Only a sweet and virtuous soul, 

 Like season'd timber, never gives ; 

 But though the whole world turn to coal, 



Then chiefly lives. 



George Herbert. 



You violets that first appeare, 

 By your pure purple mantles known, 

 Like the proud virgins of the yeare, 

 As if the spring were all your own ; 

 What are you when the Rose is blown ? 



Sir Henry Wotton. 



Thou blushing Rose, within whose virgin leaves 

 The wanton wind to sport himself presumes, 

 Whilst from their rifled wardrobe he receives 

 For his wings purple, for his breath perfumes. 



Blown in the morning, thou shalt fade ere noon ; 

 What boots a life which in such haste forsakes thee ? 

 Thou'rt wondrous frolic, being to die so soon, 

 And passing proud a little colour makes thee. 



If thee thy brittle beauty so deceives, 

 Know then the thing that swells thee is thy bane ; 

 For the same beauty doth in bloody leaves 

 The sentence of thy early death contain. 



Some clown's coarse lungs will poison thy sweet flow'r, 

 If by the careless plough thou shalt be torn ; 

 And many Herods lie in wait each hour 

 To murder thee as soon as thou art born ; 

 Nay, force thy bud to blow, their tyrant breath 

 Anticipating life to hasten death. 



Sir Richard Fanshawe. 



Some as they went the blue-eyed violets strew, 

 Some spotless lilies in loose order threw, 

 Some did the way with full-blown roses spread, 

 Their smell divine, and colour strangely red ; 

 Not such as our dull gardens proudly wear, 

 Whom weathers taint, and winds rude kisses tear : 

 Such, I believe, was the first Rose's hue, 

 Which at God's word in beauteous Eden grew ; 

 Queen of the flowers that made that orchard gay, 

 The morning blushes of the spring's new day. 



Cow ley. 



