Oft has the poet’s magic tongue 
The rose’s fair luxuriance sung ; 
And long the Muses, heavenly maids, 
Have rear’d it in their tuneful shades. 
When, at the early glance of morn, 
It sleeps upon the glittering thorn, 
’Tis sweet to dare the tangled fence, 
To cull the timid fiow’ret thence, 
And wipe with tender hand away 
The tear that on its blushes lay ! 
’Tis sweet to hold the infant stems, 
Yet dropping with Aurora’s gems, 
And fresh inhale the spicy sighs 
That from the weeping buds arise. 
When revel reigns, when mirth is high, 
And Bacchus beams in every eye, 
Our rosy fillets scent exhale, 
And fill with balm the fainting gale ! 
Oh ! there is nought in nature bright, 
Where roses do not shed their light ! 
When morning paints the orient skies. 
Her fingers burn with roseate dyes ; 
The nymphs display the rose’s charms, 
It mantles o’er their graceful arms ; 
Through Cytherea’s form it glows, 
And mingles with the living snows. 
The rose distils a healing balm, 
The beating pulse of pain to calm ; 
Jami, an eastern poet says, “ You may place a 
the nightingale ; yet he wishes not, in his constant h 
Preserves the cold inumed clay, 
And mocks the vestige of decay : 
And when at length, in pale decline, 
Its florid beauties fade and pine, 
Sweet as in youth, its balmy breath 
Diffuses odour e’en in death ! 
Oh ! whence could such a plant have sprung ? 
Attend — for thus the tale is sung : — 
When, humid, from the silvery stream. 
Effusing beauty’s warmest beam, 
Venus appear’d, in flushing hues, 
Mellow’d by ocean’s briny dews; 
When, in the starry courts above, 
The pregnant brain of mighty Jove 
Disclos’d the nymph of azure glance, 
The nymph who shakes the martial lance ! 
Then, then, in strange eventful hour, 
The earth produc’d an infant flower, 
Which sprung, with blushing tinctures drest. 
And wanton’d o’er its parent breast. 
The gods beheld this brilliant birth, 
And hail’d 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. 
idred handfuls of fragrant herbs and flowers before 
t, for more than the sweet breath of his beloved rose.” 
Oh sooner shall the rose of May 
Mistake her own sweet nightingale ; 
And to some meaner minstrel’s lay 
Open her bosom’s glowing veil, 
Than love shall ever doubt alone 
A breath of his beloved one. T. Moore. 
And James Montgomery says, in that sweet collection, the Poet’s Portfolio : 
Where the true love nightingale 
Wooes the rose in every vale. 
Moore, in his Irish Melodies, gives us a poetical reason for the beauty and delicious perfume of the 
rose. Others have stated that Love, in a feast of Olympus, in the midst of a light and lively dance, over- 
threw, with a stroke of his wing, a cup of nectar ; 
with that delightful fragrance which it still retains. 
They tell us that love in his fairy bower 
Had two blush roses of birth divine ; 
He sprinkled the one with a rainbow’s shower, 
But bathed the other with mantling wine. 
Soon did the buds, 
The rose is said to have been originally white, 
following beautiful lines: — 
While the enamoured queen of joy 
Flies to proteot her lovely boy, 
On whom the jealous war-god rushes ; 
We will conclude this article with a charming 
room in our account of the Moss Rose. 
precious liquor, falling on the rose, embalmed it 
That drank of the floods 
Distill’d by the rainbow, decline and fade ; 
While those which the tide 
Of ruby had dyed 
All blush’d into beauty, like thee, sweet maid ! — Moore. 
Catullus has accounted for its change of colour in the 
She treads upon a thorned rose, 
And while the wound with crimson flows, 
The snowy floweret feels her blood, and blushes. 
of verses from the German, for which we had not 
“ The angel of the flowers one day 
Beneath a rose-tree sleeping lay ; 
That spirit, to whose charge is given 
To bathe young buds in dews from heaven ; 
Awaking from his light repose. 
The angel whispered to the rose : 
‘ O fondest object of my care, 
Still fairest found where all are fair, 
For the sweet shade thou’st given to me, 
The Yellow Rose is the emblem of Infidelity. 
Ask what thou wilt, ’tis granted thee.’ 
‘ Then,’ said the rose, with deepened glow, 
‘ On me another grace bestow : ’ 
The spirit paused, in silent thought, 
What grace was there that flower had not ! 
’Twas but a moment : — o’er the rose 
A veil of moss the angel throws, 
And robed in Nature’s simplest weed, 
Could there a flower that rose exceed ?” 
