"*
Even more felicitous, perhaps, is Waller's `Go, lovely rose!' which is at once
a compliment and a moral (`Gosse', p. 134):
"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.
"Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
"Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
"Then die! that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wond'rous sweet and fair."
Browning's `Women and Roses' should also be mentioned,
and Mrs. Browning's translation of Sappho's lovely `Song of the Rose'.
--
* The fact that Jonson here translates a prose love-letter of Philostratus,
the Greek sophist, may detract from the originality but not the beauty
of his poem.
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