40 
The Rose. 
Hearts open like the season’s rose, 
The flow’ret of a hundred leaves, 
Expanding while the dew-fall flows, 
And every leaf its balm receives.” 
Tavernier tells us that it is affirmed by the Ghebers, or Fire- 
Worshippers, of Persia, that when Abraham, their great pro¬ 
phet, was thrown into the fire by order of Nimrod, the flame 
turned instantly into a bed of roses, where the child sweetly 
reposed. Moore thus availed himself of the tradition : 
“ Is sweet and welcome as the bed 
For their own infant prophet spread, 
When pitying Heaven to roses turn’d 
The death-flames that beneath him bum’d.” 
All roses are justly celebrated, but “ the rose of Cashmere,” 
says Forster, “for its brilliancy and delicacy of odour has long- 
been proverbial in the East.” 
“Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere 
With its roses, the brightest that earth ever gave?” 
demands Tom Moore ; and really, if it is anything like Sir 
Robert Porter’s description of one of the royal gardens of 
Persia, no one can blame the poet’s high-flown rhapsodies. 
“ On my first entering this bower of fairyland,” says Sir 
Robert, “ I was struck with the appearance of two rose-trees 
full fourteen feet high, laden with thousands of flowers in 
every degree of expansion, and of a bloom and delicacy of 
scent that embued the whole atmosphere with exquisite per¬ 
fume. Indeed, I believe that in no country in the world does 
the rose grow in such perfection as in Persia ; in no country is 
it so cultivated and prized by the natives. Their gardens and 
courts are crowded by its plants, their rooms ornamented with 
vases filled with its gathered bunches, and every bath strewed 
with the full-blown flowers, plucked from the ever-replenished 
stems. . . . But in this delicious garden of Negaaristan 
the eye and the smell are not the only senses regaled by the 
presence of the rose. The ear is enchanted by the wild and 
beautiful notes of multitudes of nightingales, whose warblings 
seem to increase in melody and softness with the unfolding of 
their favourite flower. Here, indeed, the stranger is most 
powerfully reminded that he is in the country of the nightin¬ 
gale and the rose.” 
