uch minds a Rose freshly blowing was a symbol, not
merely of Divinity in a barren, abstract manner, but of Divinity in its
most vivid and fascinating forms. It was GOD, male and female,
manifested as love, as perfume, and as light. Believing that every
flower on earth was the reflection of an arch-typal star in heaven, they
honored the Rose by holding that as a flower it was generated by and
reflected the sun, and the morning star, and, in fact, the moon also.
So, in a poem of the Arab Meflana Dschelaledin:

'The full rose, in its glory, is like the sun,
Thou seest all its leaves, each like unto the moon.'

It was therefore one of the flowers of Light. Its color was that of the
Aurora--not in Homer alone, but in all ancient song, Dawn is
rosy-fingered, rosy-hued. This resemblance to the morning is beautifully
set forth by Ausonius:

'There Paestan roses blushed before my view,
Bedropped with early morning's freshening dew;
'Twere doubtful if the blossoms of the rose
Had robbed the morning, or the morning those:
In dew, in tint the same, the star and flower,
For both confess the Queen of Beauty's power.
Perchance their sweets the same; but this more nigh
Exhales its breath, while that embalms the sky:
Of flower and star the goddess is the same,
And both she tinged with hues of roseate flame.'

As the warmest floral type of love, of light, of revelling, and of the
glowing dawn, the Rose became naturally the symbol of Youth. Here again,
some decided resemblance was, as usual, required, and it was found in
the Blush, the most characteristic, as well as the most beautiful,
indication of affinity in early life between the moral and physical
nature. Youth is the rose-time of love, the June of its summer; its
hours are those of the morning-star of life, and of its dawn; the lover
is the bud, the bride the blushing flower expanding in perfume. Every
resemblance in it refers to _incipient_ life. The Bud is GOD,
or Buddh', as the procreating deity, while the opening flower is the
conceiving Aphrodite. All is early and transitory. The tendency of roses
to quickly fade has given the poets of every land a most obvious simile
for 'fleeting youth.'

'Go, lovely rose!
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be!

* * * * *

'Then die, that she
The common fate of all things rar