INTRODUCTION. 
7 
A.nacreoaTs birth of the Rose stands thus translated by Moore: 
u Oh ! whence could, such a plant have sprung ? 
Attend—for thus the tale is sung; 
When, humid from the silvery stream, 
Venus appeared, in flushing hues, 
Mellowed by ocean’s briny dews — 
When, in the starry courts above, 
The pregnant brain of mighty Jove 
Disclosed the nymph of azure glance— 
The nymph who shakes the martial lance ! 
Then, then, in strange eventful hour, 
The earth produced an infant flower, 
Which sprung, with blushing tinctures drest, 
And wantoned o’er its parent’s breast. 
The gods beheld this brilliant birth, 
And hailed the rose—the boon of earth ! 
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.” 
The first Rose ever seen was said to have been given by the god of 
love to Harpocrates, the god of silence, to engage him not to divulge 
the amours of his mother Yenus; and from hence the ancients made it 
a symbol of silence, and it became^ custom to place a Rose above their 
heads in their banqueting rooms, in order to banish restraint, as no¬ 
thing there said would be repeated elsewhere; and from this practice 
originated the saying, sub rosa , (under the rose,) when anything 
was to be kept secret. 
Oriana, when confined a prisoner in a lofty tower, threw a wet Rose 
to her lover to express her grief and love; and in the floral language 
of the East, the presenting a rose bud with thorns and leaves, is under¬ 
stood to express both fear and hope; and when returned, reversed, it 
signifies that one must neither entertain fear nor hope. If the thorns 
be taken off before it is returned, then it expresses that one has every¬ 
thing to hope; but if the leaves be stripped off, it gives the receiver tc 
understand that he has everything to fear. 
The Moss Rose is made the emblem of voluptuous love; and th* 
creative imagination of a German poet thus pleasingly accounts foi 
this Rose having clad itself in a mossy garment: 
The angel of the flowers one day 
Beneath a rose tree sleeping lay. 
