54 
THE MUSK ROSE. 
ILLUSTRATION OP THE SENTIMENT. 
• _ 
As Venus wander’d ’midst tlie Idalian bower, 
And watch’d the loves and graces round her play. 
She pluck’d a Musk Rose from its dew-bent spray ; 
‘‘And this,” she cried, “ shall be my favourite flower, 
Por o’er its crimson leaflets I will shower 
Dissolving sweets, to steal the soul away.” 
Roscoe. 
\ 
As late I rambled in the happy fields, 
What time the skylark shakes the tremulous dew 
From its lush clover covert,—when anew 
Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields,— 
I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields, 
A fresh-blown Musk Rose; ’twas the first that threw 
Its sweets upon the summer ; graceful it grew, 
As is the wand that Queen Titania wields. 
And, as I feasted on its fragrancy, 
I thought the garden Rose it far excell’d. 
Keats. 
