It bowed with the moisture that the night had wept When the stars shone over the billow, And white-winged spirits their vigils kept, Where beauty and innocence sweetly slept On its pure and thornless pillow. FLOWERS. WORDSWORTH. Ere yet our course was graced with social trees, blue, The thyme her purple, like the blush of even; SEPTEMBER. WORDSWORTH. Departing summer hath assumed The gentlest look of spring; That calls from yonder leafy shade No faint and hesitating trill, Nor doth the example fail to cheer ROSES. The ROSE has ever been associated with beauty. Its beauty, however, passes with its perfection, and when we have watched a choice bud, till it has burst forth and become perfect, we have only to gaze upon its beauty and enjoy its fragrance for a few hours and its freshness has gone, and we sigh that such loveliness, such fragrance, should be so transient so evanescent. How touchingly beautiful the custom in other climes of strewing roses over the bier of the early dead! a true emblem of their youth, their fading loveliness. The rose is supposed to burst into bloom at the nightingale's song, and Eastern writers have associated the most beautiful of flowers with the sweetest of birds. The nightingales warbled their enchanting notes, and rent the thin veils of the rose-bud and the rose.' Sir Robert Porter remarks, that in no country in the world, the rose grows to such perfection as in Persia,' and in no country is it so cultivated and prized by the natives. Their gardens, courts, and apartments, are ornamented with them, and every bath is strewed with the fullblown flowers. The ear too, is enchanted with the beautiful notes of the nightingales. Here, indeed, the stranger is powerfully reminded, that he is in the genuine country of the nightingale and the rose.' Varied and beautiful origins have been given to the rose. We are told that the red rose was once white; and many writers give very pretty reasons for its losing its paleness, and receiving a blushing cheek. Carey bells us, that -In Eden's blissful bowers, Young Eve surveyed her countless flowers; An opening rose, of purest white, She marked with eye that beamed delight; Its leaves she kissed and straight it drew Herrick, gives a later origin to the bud with rosy hue. As Cupid danced among The gods, he down the nectar flung; Mr. Phillips, in his 'Sylva Florifera,' narrates the following pretty anecdote of the birth of the rose. 'Flora having found the corpse of a favorite nymph, whose beauty of person was only surpassed by the purity of her heart and chastity of her mind, resolved to raise a plant from the precious remains of this daughter of the Dryads; for which purpose she begged the assistance of Venus and the Graces, as well as of all the deities that preside over gardens, to assist in the transformation of the nymph into a flower, that was to be by them proclaimed queen of all the vegetable beauties.' The ceremony was attended by the Zephyrs, who cleared the atmosphere, in order that Apollo might bless the new-created progeny by his beams. Bacchus supplied rivers of nectar to nourish it; and Vertumnus poured his choicest perfumes over the plant. When the metamorphosis was complete, Pomona strewed her fruit over the young branches, which were then crowned by Flora with a diadem, that had been purposely prepared by the celestials, to distinguish this queen of flowers.' ANACREON. With nectar drops a ruby tide, The sweetly orient buds they dyed, And bade them bloom; the flowers divine, On him who sheds the teeming vine. Rose! thou art the sweetest flower That ever drank the amber shower! Of dimpled Spring! the wood-nymph wild. |