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40 THE POETRY OP FLOWERS. 
emblem of earthly pleasure than any other flower : 
it bears a thorn. While its odorous breath is float- 
ing on the summer gale, and its blushing cheek, 
half hid amongst the sheltering leaves, seems to 
woo and yet shrink from the beholder's gaze, 
touch but with adventurous hand the garden 
queen, and you are pierced with her protecting 
thorns : would you pluck the rose, and weave it 
into a garland for the brow you love best, that 
brow will be wounded: or place the sweet blos- 
som in your bosom, the thorn will be there. This 
real or ideal mingling of pain and sorrow with 
the exquisite beauty of the rose aflbrds a never- 
ending theme to those who are best acquainted 
with the inevitable blending of clouds and sun- 
shine, hope and fear, weal and woe, in this our 
earthly inheritance. 
With every thing fair, or sweet, or exquisite in 
this world, it has seemed meet to that wisdom 
which appoints our sorrows, and sets a bound to 
our enjoyments, to affix some stain, some bitter- 
ness, or some alloy, which may not inaptly be 
called, in figurative language, a thorn. St. Paul 
emphatically speaks of a " thorn in the flesh ; " and 
from this expression, as well as from his earnest- 
ness in having prayed thrice that it might be re- 
moved, we conclude' it must have been something 
particularly galling to the natural man. W^e hear 
of the thorn of ingratitude, the thorn of envy, the 
thorn of unrequited love indeed, of thorns as 
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