The Rose. 
45 
that that was her age at the time of its composition poor Edgar 
Poe, an intense admirer of the poetess, assures us. The fol¬ 
lowing chat with the emblem of love and beauty, by Mrs. 
Sigourney, another American poetess, will probably read coldly 
after Frances Osgood’s poem : 
“Most glorious rose, 
You are the queenly belle. On you all eyes 
Admiring turn. Doubtless you might indite 
Romances from your own sweet history— 
They ’re quite the fashion now, and crowd the page 
Of every periodical. Wilt tell 
None of your heart adventures? Never mind! 
We plainly read the Zephyr’s stolen kiss 
In your deep blush; so where’s the use to seal 
Your lips so cunningly, when all the world 
Calls you the flower of love ?” 
Yes! all the world knows that the beautiful rose is the em¬ 
blem of love ; but none alluded to the fact more masterly than 
did “ Love’s own minstrel,” Anacreon, and in these verses Leigh 
Hunt has ably transmuted the glowing words of the glorious 
old Tean into our modest English tongue: 
“ The rose, the flower of love, 
Mingle with our quaffing; 
The rose, the lovely leaved, 
Round our brows be weaved, 
Genially laughing. 
‘ ‘ Oh, the rose, the first of flowers, 
Darling of the early bowers, 
E’en the gods for thee have places; 
Thee, too, Cytherea’s boy 
Weaves about his locks for joy, 
Dancing with the Graces. 
But the short life of this august flower ofttimes causes it, 
when fading, to be deemed a suitable representative of fleeting 
beauty, and many are the “ morals ” that poet and philosopher 
have deduced from this stage; but there is also another record 
to be made, and that is of its fragrance after death: the flush 
of beauty may be gone from its withered petals, but the scent 
of the rose will cling to it still; and so, even when life is over, 
we yet place, as Barry Cornwall remarks, 
“ First of all, the rose; because its breath 
Is rich beyond the rest; and when it dies, 
It doth bequeath a charm to sweeten death. ” 
Yes, kind friend ! even a dead rose —emblem of sweet memories 
—“ doth bequeath a charm to sweeten death,” because, though 
“ pale, and hard, and dry as stubble-wheat,” yet, as Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning tells us, 
