Roses
Roses signify completion, the achievement of perfection. The sinless Christian earns for her or himself a rose. The virgin gets a white rose. Red roses stand for earthly love and blue roses (very rare) represent an impossible end. Perhaps to keep mourners cheered, blue roses seldom appear in cemetery art. Yellow roses, the emblem of jealousy, also seldom appear: few envy the dead so much.
| O month of
flowerings, month of metamorphoses, May without cloud and June that was stabbed, I shall never forget the lilac and the roses Nor those whom spring has kept in its folds. |
Ô
mois des floraisons mois des métamorphoses Mai qui fut sans nuage et Juin poignardé Je n'oublierai jamais les lilas ni les roses Ni ceux que le printemps dans ses plis a gardé. |
| Louis Aragon, Heartbreak | Le Crève-Coeur - Les lilas et les roses |
The Rose in the garden
slipped her bud,
And she laughed... as she thought of the Gardener standing by-
"He is old, -so old! And he soon must die!"
...she laughed once more as
she heard his tread-
"He is older now! He will soon be dead!"
...the leaves of the blown
Rose strewed the ground;
And he came at noon, that Gardener old,
And he raked them gently under the mould.
Austin Dobson, A Fancy from Fontenelle
I made another garden, yea,
For my new love:
I left the dead rose where it lay
And set the new above.
... my old Love came... and laid the garden waste.
...Her passing touch was death
to all,
Her passing look a blight;
She made the white-rose petals fall,
And turn'd the red rose white.
Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Song
