us and the Graces--nay, in a certain sense,
the very Venus herself, dew-dripping and odorous, the Rose soon shed the
Aurora light to which it was compared, and its winning perfume, over
every antique dream of love and beauty. It rises with the sea-foam when
Aphrodite comes in pearly whiteness from the blue waters; or it is born
of the blood of the dying Adonis when he--the type of summer
beauty--dies by the tusk of the boar, the emblem of winter, of
destruction, and of death; or it springs from the exquisitely pure and
sacred drops incarnadine of the goddess herself when scratched by
thorns, in pursuit of her darling. And as among the ancients, whether
Etruscan or Egyptian, it was usual to celebrate the rites of Venus
during banquets, the rose, with which the revellers and their goblets
were crowned, became also the symbol of Dionysus--or of Bacchus. And as
silence should be especially kept as to the secret pleasures of love and
the favors of fair ladies, as well as to what is uttered when heated by
wine, the rose was also hung up at all orgies to intimate
silence--whence the expression _sub rosa_, 'under the rose.' And
therefore Harpocrates, the god of silence and mystery (or of the secret
productive force of Nature), bears this flower--the first emblem of
'still life'--silence as to the joys of love and wine.

'Let us the Rose of Love entwine
Round the cheek-flushed god of wine:
As the rose its gaudy leaves
Round our twisted temples weaves,
Let us sip the time away,
Let us laugh as blithe as they.

'Rose, oh rose, the gem of flowers!
Rose, the care of vernal hours!
Rose, of every god the joy!
With roses Venus' darling boy
Links the Graces in a round
With him in flowery fetters bound.

'With roses, Bacchus, crown my head:
The lyre in hand thy courts I'll tread,
And, with some full-bosomed maid,
Dance, nodding with the rosy braid,
That veils me with its clustered shade.'

ANACREON.

The study of mythologic symbolism gives a thousand indications that in
prehistoric ages, among the worshippers of the Serpent and the Fire, all
the deepest feelings of men, whether artistic, religious, or sensual,
were concentrated on the real or fancied affinities of natural objects
with an earnestness of which we of the present age have no conception.
Poetry, as it exists for us, is a pretty rococo fancy; to the
worshippers and framers of myths it was a truth of tremendous
significance. To s