MID-SUMMER 
The hills are sweet with the brier-rose. — Whittier. 
Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a brier. — Edmund Spencer. 
As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again. — Keats. 
What mortal knows Whence comes the tint and odor of the rose. 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 
The rose saith in the dewy morn, 
I am most fair; 
Yet all my loveliness is born 
Upon a thorn. — Christina G. Rossetti. 
The roses grew so thickly, I never saw the thorn, 
Nor deemed the stem was prickly until my hand was torn. 
— Peter Spencer. 
Gather ye rosebuds while you may, 
Old Time is still a-flying ; 
And this same flower that smiles to-day 
To-morrow will be dying. — Herrick. 
If this fair rose offend thy sight, 
Placed in thy bosom bare, 
'Twill blush to find itself less white, 
And turn Lancastrian there. — Unknown. 
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, 
Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows, 
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, 
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine. — Shakespeare. 
The rose is fairest when 'tis budding new, 
And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears ; 
The rose is sweetest washed with morning dew, 
And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears. — Scott. 
My life is like the summer rose 
That opens to the morning sky, 
But ere the shades of evening close, 
Is scattered on the ground — to die ! 
Yet on the rose's humble bed 
The sweetest dews of night are shed. 
Richard Henry Wilde. 
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