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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Roses

The smiles of God’s goodness.

Wilberforce.

Behold the glowing blush upon the rose.

T. B. Read.

And I will make the beds of roses.

Marlowe.

The budding rose above the rose full blown.

Wordsworth.

From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.

Shakespeare.

The red rose on triumphant brier.

Shakespeare.

Blown roses hold their sweetness to the last.

Dryden.

A white rosebud for a guerdon.

E. B. Browning.

  • Roses were sette of sweete savour,
  • With many roses that thei bere.
  • Chaucer.

  • Yon rose-buds in the morning dew,
  • How pure amang the leaves sae green!
  • Burns.

    When love came first to earth, the spring spread rose-beds to receive him.

    Campbell.

    The rose that lives its little hour is prized beyond the sculptured flower.

    Bryant.

    The gathered rose and the stolen heart can charm but for a day.

    Emma C. Embury.

    Happy are they who can create a rose-tree, or erect a honeysuckle.

    Gray.

    And ’tis my faith that every flower enjoys the air it breathes.

    Wordsworth.

    ’Tis the last rose of summer, left blooming alone.

    Moore.

    O’ercanopied with luscious woodbine, with sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.

    Shakespeare.

    The rose is wont with pride to swell, and ever seeks to rise.

    Goethe.

    It never rains roses; when we want more roses, we must plant more trees.

    George Eliot.

    The seasons alter; hoary-headed frosts fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose.

    Shakespeare.

  • All June I bound the rose in sheaves,
  • Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves.
  • Robert Browning.

    Proud be the rose, with rain and dews her head impearling.

    Wordsworth.

  • Rose of the desert! thus should woman be
  • Shining uncourted, lone and safe, like thee.
  • Moore.

    The coming spring would first appear, and all this place with roses strew, if busy feet would let them grow.

    Waller.

    Mild May’s eldest child, the coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

    Keats.

    The rosebuds lay their crimson lips together, and the green leaves are whispering to themselves.

    Amelia B. Welby.

  • And half in shade and half in sun;
  • The rose sat in her bower,
  • With a passionate thrill in her crimson heart.
  • Bayard Taylor.

  • For those roses bright, oh, those roses bright!
  • I have twined them in my sister’s locks
  • That are hid in the dust from sight.
  • Phœbe Cary.

  • Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
  • Old Time is still a-flying;
  • And this same flower that smiles to-day
  • To-morrow will be dying.
  • Herrick.

    A wreath of dewy roses, fresh and sweet, just brought from out the garden’s cool retreat.

    Julia C. R. Dorr.

  • Rose of the garden! such is woman’s lot—
  • Worshipp’d while blooming—when she fades, forgot.
  • Moore.

  • And when the parent-rose decays and dies,
  • With a resembling face the daughter-buds arise.
  • Prior.

  • The rose distils a healing balm
  • The beating pulse of pain to calm.
  • Moore.

  • The rose is fairest when ’tis budding new,
  • And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears;
  • The rose is sweetest wash’d with morning dew,
  • And love is loveliest when, embalmed in tears.
  • Scott.

  • The rose saith in the dewy morn,
  • I am most fair;
  • Yet all my loveliness is born
  • Upon a thorn.
  • Christina G. Rossetti.

  • O, how much more doth Beauty beauteous seem,
  • By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
  • The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem,
  • For that sweet odor which doth in it live.
  • Shakespeare.

  • The rose
  • Propt at the cottage door with careful hands,
  • Bursts its green bud, and looks abroad for May.
  • Thos. Buchanan Read.

  • I am the one rich thing that morn
  • Leaves for the ardent noon to win;
  • Grasp me not, I have a thorn,
  • But bend and take my being in.
  • Harriet Prescott Spofford.

  • Rose! thou art the sweetest flower,
  • That ever drank the amber shower;
  • Rose! thou art the fondest child
  • Of dimpled Spring, the wood-nymph wild.
  • Moore.

  • Woo on, with odour wooing me,
  • Faint rose with fading core;
  • For God’s rose-thought, that blooms in thee,
  • Will bloom forevermore.
  • George MacDonald.

  • What would the rose with all her pride be worth,
  • Were there no sun to call her brightness forth?
  • Moore.

  • It is written on the rose
  • In its glory’s full array:
  • Read what those buds disclose—
  • “Passing away.”
  • Mrs. Hemans.

  • I wish I might a rose-bud grow
  • And thou wouldst cull me from the bower,
  • To place me on that breast of snow
  • Where I should bloom a wintry flower.
  • Dionysius.

  • And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest,
  • Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
  • Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air,
  • The soul of her beauty and love lay bare.
  • Shelley.

  • I watched a rose-bud very long
  • Brought on by dew and sun and shower,
  • Waiting to see the perfect flower:
  • Then when I thought it should be strong
  • It opened at the matin hour
  • And fell at even-song.
  • Christina G. Rossetti.

  • We bring roses, beautiful fresh roses,
  • Dewy as the morning and coloured like the dawn;
  • Little tents of odour, where the bee reposes,
  • Swooning in sweetness of the bed he dreams upon.
  • Thos. Buchanan Read.

  • The roses that in yonder hedge appear
  • Outdo our garden-buds which bloom within;
  • But since the hand may pluck them every day,
  • Unmarked they bud, bloom, drop, and drift away.
  • Jean Ingelow.

  • A sunbeam warm’d thee into bloom;
  • A zephyr’s kiss thy blushes gave:
  • The tears of ev’ning shed perfume,
  • And morn will beam upon thy grave.
  • How like to thee, thou transient flower,
  • The doom of all we love on earth;
  • Beauty, like thee, but decks an hour,
  • Decay feeds on it from its birth.
  • Bohn.

  • If on creation’s morn the king of heaven
  • To shrubs and flowers a sovereign lord had given,
  • O beauteous rose, he had anointed thee
  • Of shrubs and flowers the sovereign lord to be;
  • The spotless emblem of unsullied truth,
  • The smile of beauty and the glow of youth,
  • The garden’s pride, the grace of vernal bowers,
  • The blush of meadows, and the eye of flowers.
  • Bohn.

  • Long, long be my heart with such memories fill’d!
  • Like the vase, in which roses have once been distill’d—
  • You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
  • But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
  • Moore.

  • O beautiful, royal Rose,
  • O Rose, so fair and sweet!
  • Queen of the garden art thou,
  • And I—the Clay at thy feet!
  • *****
  • Yet, O thou beautiful Rose!
  • Queen rose, so fair and sweet,
  • What were lover or crown to thee
  • Without the Clay at thy feet?
  • Julia C. R. Dorr.

  • It was nothing but a rose I gave her,—
  • Nothing but a rose
  • Any wind might rob of half its savor,
  • Any wind that blows.
  • *****
  • Withered, faded, pressed between these pages,
  • Crumpled, fold on fold,—
  • Once it lay upon her breast, and ages
  • Cannot make it old!
  • Harriet Prescott Spofford.

  • You love the roses—so do I. I wish
  • The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
  • From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
  • Then all the valleys would be pink and white,
  • And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
  • As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
  • Like sleeping and yet waking, all at once.
  • Over the sea, Queen, where we soon shall go,
  • Will it rain roses?
  • George Eliot.

  • How fair is the Rose! what a beautiful flower.
  • The glory of April and May!
  • But the leaves are beginning to fade in an hour,
  • And they wither and die in a day.
  • Yet the Rose has one powerful virtue to boast,
  • Above all the flowers of the field;
  • When its leaves are all dead, and fine colours are lost,
  • Still how sweet a perfume it will yield!
  • Isaac Watts.