The Rose. 
4 * 
The loves of the nightingale and the rose have already been 
more than once alluded to, but the subject is inexhaustible. 
This melodious bird appears in the East at the season when 
its adored dower begins to blow, which has engendered the 
poetical fiction that it bursts forth from its bud at the song of 
its admirer. Says the admired poet, Jami, “The nightingales 
warbled their enchanting notes and rent the thin veils of the 
rose-bud and the rose;” and Moore has sung, in his soft song, 
“ 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 a tone— 
A breath—of the beloved one!” 
Mrs. Browning has alluded in the most exquisite tones to 
this sweet legend in her “ Lay of the Early Rose ”—that foolish 
flower that oped her petals ere the summer came, and deemed 
“Ten nightingales shall flee 
Their woods for love of me. ” 
Jami asserts with poetic freedom that “You may place a hand- 
full of fragrant herbs and flowers before the nightingale ; yet 
he wishes not in his constant heart for more than the sweet 
breath of his beloved rose.” 
“ Though rich the spot 
With every flower this earth has got, 
What is it to the nightingale 
If there his darling rose is not?” 
asks the author of “ Lalla Rookh.” The following lines are 
from a lyric of Hafiz, wherein the poet assumes the character 
of a nightingale in addressing his love: 
“ Once more see the nightingale, languid and faint, 
Pours forth to the garden his sorrowful plaint: 
May the rose ever flourish in beauty and bloom; 
May evil ne’er touch her, misfortune ne’er come; 
Long, long may she flourish wherever she’s seen, 
And rule ’midst the flowers as the sovereign queen! 
But, oh, may she smile with less scornful an eye, 
Nor leave her poor lovers to languish and die !” 
Lord Byron did not overlook the pretty fable, and in the 
“ Bride of Abydos” makes a solitary rose bloom above Zuleika’s 
