The Roses

Roses are a wandering scent from heaven.
Rose-seller, why do you sell your roses?
For silver? But with the silver from your roses
What can you buy so precious as your roses?

From the Persian of Abu-Yshac (middle of the tenth century).

Edward Powys Mathers

Edward Powys Mathers was an English translator and poet, best known for translating the French Orientalist J.C. Mardrus's translation of 'The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night' in 1923. In addition to translations, Powys Mathers was an influential figure in the realm of cryptic crosswords, devising some of the most challenging puzzles for 'The Observer'. His translations have been lauded for their literary beauty and for introducing English-speaking audiences to classic Persian, Arabic, and Turkish poetry.

Edward Powys Mathers

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English

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Two Roses

A humble wild-rose, pink and slender,
    Was plucked and placed in a bright bouquet,
Beside a Jacqueminot's royal splendour,
    And both in my lady's boudoir lay.

Said the haughty bud, in a tone of scorning,
    "I wonder why you are called a rose?
Your leaves will fade in a single morning;
    No blood of mine in your pale cheek glows.

"Your coarse green stalk shows dust of the highway,
    You have no depths of fragrant bloom;
And what could you learn in a rustic byway
    To fit you to lie in my lady's room?

"If called to adorn her warm, white bosom,
    What have you to offer for such a place,
Beside my fragrant and splendid blossom,
    Ripe with colour and rich with grace?"

Said the sweet wild-rose, "Despite your dower
    ...

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Song Of A Poor Pilgrim

Roses all the rosy way!
    Roses to the rosier west
Where the roses of the day
    Cling to night's unrosy breast!

Thou who mak'st the roses, why
    Give to every leaf a thorn?
On thy rosy highway I
    Still am by thy roses torn!

Pardon! I will not mistake
    These good thorns that make me fret!
Goads to urge me, stings to wake,
    For my freedom they are set.

Yea, on one steep mountain-side,
    Climbing to a fancied fold,
Roses grasped had let me slide
    But the thorns did keep their hold.

Out of darkness light is born,
    Out of weakness make me strong:
One glad day will every thorn
    Break into a rose of song.

Though like sparrow sit thy bird
    Lonely on the house-top dark,
By the rosy...

George MacDonald

The Mossrose

    Walking to-day in your garden, O gracious lady,
    Little you thought as you turned in that alley remote and shady,
    And gave me a rose and asked if I knew its savour--
    The old-world scent of the mossrose, flower of a bygone favour--

    Little you thought as you waited the word of appraisement,
    Laughing at first and then amazed at my amazement,
    That the rose you gave was a gift already cherished,
    And the garden whence you plucked it a garden long perished.

    But I--I saw that garden, with its one treasure
    The tiny mossrose, tiny even by childhood's measure,
    And the long morning shadow of the dusty laurel,
    And a boy and a girl beneath it, flushed with a childish quarrel.

    She wept for her one little bud: but he, outreachi...

Henry John Newbolt

For A Present Of Roses

Crimson and cream and white--
    My room is a garden of roses!
Centre and left and right,
    Three several splendid posies.

As the sender is, they are sweet,
    These lovely gifts of your sending,
With the stifling summer heat
    Their delicate fragrance blending.

What more can my heart desire?
    Has it lost the power to be grateful?
Is it only a burnt-out fire,
    Whose ashes are dull and hateful?

Yet still to itself it doth say,
    'I should have loved far better
To have found, coming in to-day,
    The merest scrap of a letter.'

Robert Fuller Murray

Only Roses!

To a garden full of posies
Cometh one to gather flowers,
And he wanders through its bowers
Toying with the wanton roses,
Who, uprising from their beds,
Hold on high their shameless heads
With their pretty lips a-pouting,
Never doubting never doubting
That for Cytherean posies
He would gather aught but roses!

In a nest of weeds and nettles,
Lay a violet, half hidden,
Hoping that his glance unbidden
Yet might fall upon her petals,
Though she lived alone, apart,
Hope lay nestling at her heart,
But, alas! the cruel awaking
Set her little heart a-breaking,
For he gathered for his posies
Only roses only roses!

William Schwenck Gilbert

The Rose: To Ellen.

The sportive sylphs that course the air,
Unseen on wings that twilight weaves,
Around the opening rose repair,
And breathe sweet incense o'er its leaves.

With sparkling cups of bubbles made,
They catch the ruddy beams of day,
And steal the rainbow's sweetest shade,
Their blushing favorite to array.

They gather gems with sunbeams bright,
From floating clouds and falling showers
They rob Aurora's locks of light
To grace their own fair queen of flowers.

Thus, thus adorned, the speaking Rose,
Becomes a token fit to tell,
Of things that words can ne'er disclose,
And nought but this reveal so well.

Then take my flower, and let its leaves
Beside thy heart be cherished near,
While that confiding heart receives
The thought it whis...

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