The Rose. 
47 
been named the English rose, is thus patriotically spoken oi 
by Browne: 
“ Whence she upon her breast—(love’s sweet repose)— 
Doth bring the queen of flowers, the English rose.” 
Human life is compared with this flower by Kcble, in the 
“ Christian Year.” In one sweet verse he bids us 
‘ * Let the dainty rose awhile, 
Her bashful fragrance hide— 
Rend not her silken veil too soon, 
But leave her in her own sweet noon, 
To flourish and abide.” 
Philip Bailey, author of “ Festus,” that magnificent store¬ 
house of “ seed poetry,” as our present Laureate appropriately 
names it, says : 
‘ ‘ Love is like a rose, 
And a month it may not see 
Ere it withers where it grows. ” 
We would give love and beauty longer life, but, alas ! poli¬ 
tician as well as poet are against us ; for hear what Charles 
James Fox has rhymed about their emblem bloom : 
“ The rose, the sweetly blooming rose, “ But, oh! how soon its sweets are gone, 
Ere from, the tree’t is torn, How soon it withering lies! 
Is like the charms which beauty shows So, when the eve of life comes on, 
In life’s exulting morn. Sweet beauty fades and dies. 
“ Then since the fairest form that’s made 
Soon withering we shall find, 
Let us possess what ne’er shall fade— 
The beauties of the mind.” 
There is a highly imaginative stanza in “ Alnwick Castle,” 
by Halleck, the American poet, in which these token-flowers 
are suggestively introduced : 
“ Wild roses by the Abbey towers 
Are gay in their young bud and bloom— 
They were born of a race of funeral flowers, 
That garlanded, in long-gone hours, 
A Templar’s knightly tomb.” 
The queen of flowers has had many wild lhapsodies poured 
forth in her praise, and many quaint things have been said of 
her powers 5 but surely no one ever equalled the marvellous 
Culpepper in ascribing wonders to her influence , and yet, not- 
