AND FLOWERS OF POETRY. 37 
With nectar drops, a ruby tide, 
The sweetly orient buds they dyed. 
And bade them bloom, the flowers divine 
Of him who sheds the teeming vine; 
And bade them on the spangled thorn 
Expand their bosoms to the morn. 
Jami, an eastern poet, says, “You may place a hundred 
handfuls 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.” 
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, 
Then love shall ever doubt alone, 
A breath of his beloved one. 
Moore. 
And James Montgomery says, in that sweet collection the 
Portfolio: — 
Where the true-love nightingale, 
Woos the rose in every vale. 
The following anecdote is narrated by Mr. Phillips, in his 
“Sylva Florifera,” of the birth of the rose: — “Flora having 
found the corpse of a favourite nymph, whose beauty of person 
was only surpassed by the purity of her heart and chastity of 
her mind, resolved to raise a plant from the precious-remains 
of this daughter of the Dryads, for which purpose she begged 
the assistance of Venus and the Graces, as well as of all the 
deities that preside over gardens, to assist in the transformation 
of the nymph into a flower that was to be by them proclaimed 
queen of all the vegetable beauties. The ceremony was 
attended by the zephyrs, who cleared the atmosphere, in order 
D 
