28 
The Rose. 
“ Plant the green sod with the crimson rose, 
Let my friends rejoice o’er my calm repose, 
Let my memory be like the odours shed, 
My hope like the promise of early red; 
Let strangers share in their breath and bloom— 
Plant ye the bright roses over my tomb.” 
So sang this pathetic writer, whose melancholy fate seems to 
throw a shadow of sadness over everything that she has written. 
Poor Laman Blanchard, whose own destiny was terminated so 
prematurely, in his “ Life and Literary Remains of L. E. L.,” 
tells of a touching and graceful compliment once paid to the 
subject of his story: “ It was a tribute from America, sent from 
the far-off banks of the Ohio, a curious species of the Michigan 
rose, accompanied by a prayer that she would plant it on the 
grave of Mrs. Hemans. To no hand could it have been more 
appropriately transmitted than to the hand which wrote so 
reverently and raptuously of that gifted woman and whose 
own words she might well wailingly quote, and say, 
‘ * The rose, the glorious rose, is gone. ” 
It does seem strange that flowers—and of all flowers, that 
most brilliant one, the rose—should be so often associated with 
death and sorrow ; and yet the combination is a universal one. 
P'ormerly, the rose was blended with the lily, to form a general 
emblem of frail mortality. “ This sweet flower,” says Evelyn, 
“ borne on a branch set with thorn, and accompanied with the 
lily, are natural hieroglyphics of our fugitive, anxious, and tran¬ 
sitory life, which, making so fair a show for a time, is not yet 
without its thorns and crosses.” Washington Irving, in his 
sketch of rural funerals, says : “The white rose was planted at 
the grave of a maiden ; her chaplet was tied with white ribands 
in token of her spotless innocence, though sometimes black 
ribands were intermingled, to bespeak the grief of survivors. 
The red rose was occasionally used .... but roses in general 
were appropriated to the graves of lovers.” Evelyn tells us 
that near his residence in Surrey, “ the maidens yearly planted 
and decked the graves of their defunct sweethearts with rose¬ 
bushes and Camden, in his “ Britannia,” remarks : “ Here is 
also a certain custom, observed time out of mind, of planting 
rose trees upon the graves, especially by the young men and 
maids who have lost their loves.” 
