vet 
BEAUTY. 53 
Moore, in his Irish Melodies, gives us a 
poetical reason for the beauty and delicious 
perfume of the rose. Others have stated that 
Love, in a feast of Olympus, in the midst of 
a light and lively dance, overthrew, with a 
stroke of his wing, a cup of nectar; which 
precious liquor, falling on the rose, embalmed 
it with that delightful fragrance which it still 
retains. 
They tell us that love in his fairy bower 
Had two blush roses, of birth divine ; 
He sprinkled the one with a rainbow’s shower, 
But bathed the other with mantling wine. 
Soon did the buds, 
That drank of the fioods 
Distill’d by the rainbow, decline and fade; 
While those which the tide 
Of ruby had dyed 
All blush’d into beauty, like thee, sweet maid ! 
MOORE. 
The rose is said to have been originally white. 
Catullus has accounted for its change of colour 
in the following beautiful lines :— 
While the enamoured queen of joy 
Flies to protect her lovely boy, 
On whom the jealous war-god rushes ; 
She treads upon a thorned rose, 
And while the wound with crimson flows, 
The snowy fioweret feels her blood, and blushes! 











