ONLY ROSES 



"In Eastern lands they talk in flowers, 

 And in a garland they tell their loves and cares; 

 Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers. 

 On its leaves a mystic language bears." 



ERHAPS it may be going a bit too far to im- 

 agine that in this rather materiaHstic age 

 even the most enthusiastic amateur gar- 

 dener is capable of such flights of fancy 

 as stir the poet mind. We are probably 

 too busy fighting slugs and bugs and watching 

 the development of promising buds to indulge 

 the pleasant inclination to hyperbole that is part 

 and parcel of the Eastern mind of which the 

 poet sings. 



^ Nevertheless, no matter how prosaically we 

 fight the slugs and bugs and count our rosary of 

 buds, the fruition of our cherished plants is fraught 

 with a "mystic language" and the message of the 

 blooms is a potent and appealing one though we 

 may not actually appreciate it as such, nor, if we 

 do, be able to clothe our thoughts in such a 

 bright panoply of words. Consciously or un- 



7 



