Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;
Air, would I might triumph so!
But, alack, my hand is sworn
Ne’er to pluck thee from thy thorn.”
The scene in the Temple-garden; the contest in plucking roses between Richard Plantagenet and the Earls of Somerset, Suffolk, and Warwick (1 Henry VI., act ii. sc. 4, lines 30–75, vol. v. pp. 36, 37), continually alludes to the thorns that may be found. We may sum the whole “brawl,” as it is termed, into a brief space (l. 68),—
“Plan. Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset?
Som. Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?
Plan. Ay, sharp and piercing, to maintain his truth;
Whiles thy consuming canker eats his falsehood.”
“True as the needle to the pole,” is a saying which of course must have originated since the invention of the mariner’s compass. Sambucus, in his Emblems (edition 1584, p. 84, or 1599, p. 79), makes the property of the loadstone his emblem for the motto, The mind remains unmoved.