INTRODUCTIOI*. 7 



Anacreon's birth of the Rose stands thus translated by Moore : 



" Oh ! whence could such a plant have sprung ? 

 Attend — for thus the tale is sung ; 

 When, humid from the silvery stream, 

 Venus appeared, in flushing hues, 

 Mellowed by ocean's briny dews — 

 When, in the starry courts above, 

 The pregnant brain of mighty Jove 

 Disclosed the nymph of azure glance— 

 The nymph who shakes the martial lance ! 

 Then, then, in strange eventful hour, 

 The earth produced an infant flower, 

 Which sprung, with blusjiing tinctures drest, 

 And wantoned o'er its parent's breast. 

 The gods beheld this brilliant birth, 

 And hailed the rose — the boon of earth ! 

 "With nectar drops a ruby tide. 

 The sweetly-orient buds they dyed, 

 And bade them bloom, the flowers divine 

 Of him who sheds the teeming vine ; 

 And bade them on the spangled thorn 

 Expand their bosoms to the morn." 



The first Rose ever seen was said to have been given by the god of 

 love to HarpocrateSj the god of silence, to engage him not to divulge 

 the amours of his mother "Venus ; and from hence the ancients made it 

 a symbol of silence, and itbecame a custom to place a Rose above their 

 heads in their banqueting rooms, in order to banish restraint, as no- 

 thing there said would be repeated elsewhere ; and from this practice 

 originated the saying, sub rosa^ (under the rosej when anything 

 was to be kept secret. 



Oriana, when confined a prisoner in a lofty tower, threw a wet Rose 

 to her lover to express her grief and love ; and in the floral language 

 of the East, the presenting a rose bud with thorns and leaves,- is under- 

 stood to express both fear and hope ; and when returned, reversed, it 

 signifies that one must neither entertain fear nor hope. If the thorns 

 be taken off before it is returned, then it expresses that one has every- 

 thing to hope ; but if the leaves be stripped off, it gives the receiver to 

 understand that he has everything to fear. 



The Moss Rose is made the emblem of voluptuous love j and the 

 creative imagination of a German poet thus pleasingly accounts for 

 this Rose having clad itself in a mossy garment : 



The angel of the flowers one day 

 Beneath a rose tree sleeping lay. 



