






BEAUTY, 
Oft has the poet’s magic tongue 
The rose’s fair luxuriance sung ; 
And long the Muses, heavenly maids, 
Have rear’d it in their tuneful shades. 
When, at the early glance of morn, 
It sleeps upon the glittering thorn, 
°Tis sweet to dare the tangled fence, 
To cull the timid flow’ret thence, 
And wipe with tender hand away 
The tear that on its blushes lay ! 
*Tis sweet to hold the infant stems, 
Yet dropping with Aurora’s gems, 
And fresh inhale the spicy sighs 
That from the weeping buds arise. 
When revel reigns, when mirth is high, 
And Bacchus beams in every eye, 
Our rosy fillets scent exhale, 
And fill with balm the fainting gale ! 
Oh | there is nought in nature bright, 
Where roses do not shed their light ! 
When morning paints the orient skies, 
Her fingers burn with roseate dyes; 
The nymphs display the rose’s charms, 
It mantles o’er their graceful arms ; 
Through Cytherea’s form it glows, 
And mingles with the living snows. 
The rose distils a healing balm, 
The beating pulse of pain to calm; 
Preserves the cold inurned clay, 
And mocks the vestige of decay : 
And when at length, in pale decline, 
Its florid beauties fade and pine, 
Sweet as in youth, its balmy breath 
Diffuses odour e’en in death ! 

