Page View
Gleadall, Eliza Eve / The beauties of flora : with botanic and poetic illustrations, being a selection of flowers drawn from nature arranged emblematically : with directions for colouring them
(1834)
Pink and scarlet Moss Rose-Buds, Beauty, love, and poetry, pp. Plate 16-32 ff.
Page 31
31
16.
BEAUTY, LOVE, AND POETRY.
Rose muscose. Pink and scarlet
Moss Rose-Buds.
Natural Order.
Clus and Order.
ROSACEXE. ICOSANDRIA
POLYGYNIA.
THE attributes and loveliness of the Rose, it has been already observed,
have been sung by the poets
of every country.
Et qui peut refuser un hommage i la Rose,
La Rose, dont Venus compose ses bosquets,
Le printemps sa guirlande, et 1' amour
ses bouquets,
Qu' Anacr6on chanta, qui formoit avec grace
Dans les jours de festin lea couronnes
d' Horace,
La Rose au doux parfum, de qui 1' extrait
divin
Goutte i goutte vers6 par une avare main
Parfume, en s'exhalant, tout un palais
d' Asie,
Comme un doux souvenir remplit toute la
vie?"
Les
Jardins, de DELILLE.
But the Rose has perhaps never been more beautifully described than
by Bishop Jeremy Taylor,
when he compares its charms and fleeting existence to the life of man.
" But so I have seen a Rose
newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and at first it was fair as
the morning, and full with the
dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece: but when a ruder breath had forced open
its virgin modesty, and
dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness,
and to decline to softness,
and the symptoms of a sickly age: it bowed the head, and broke its stalk,
and at night, having lost
some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds,
and worn-out faces."
" How much of memory dwells amidst thy
bloom,
Rose ! ever wearing beauty for thy dower!
The bridal-day-the festival-the tomb-
Thou hast thy part in each,-thou stateliest
flower!
" Therefore with thy soft breath come
floating by
A thousand images of Love and Grief,
Dreams, filled with tokens of mortality,
Deep thoughts of all things beautiful and briel
Not such thy spells o'er those who hailed thee fir
In the clear light of Eden's golden day;
There thy rich leaves to crimson glory burst,
Linked with no dim remembrance of decay.
" Rose ! for the banquet gathered, and the bier;
Rose ! coloured now by human hope or pain;
Surely where death is not,-nor change, nor feE
Yet we may meet thee, Joy's own Flower, ag
Based on the date of publication, this material is presumed to be in the public domain.| For information on re-use see: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/Copyright




