What flower, with carnations, I pray[2]?
They always speak of it, thus, as only next in order to female beauty, and the amorous swain is continually raising the comparison.
To January’s biting frost
No carnation trusts its charms,
The tints that Heav’n thy cheeks has given,
Are dyed ingrain and fear no harms[3],
he sings; or perhaps,—
My carnation was raising a plaint,
I ask’d it to tell me its grief,
And it said that thy lips were so fair,