I.
Mournful night is dark around me,
Hushed the world's conflicting din;
All is still and all is tranquil—
But this restless heart within!
II.
Wakeful still I press my pillow,
Watch the stars that float above,
Think of One for me who suffered;
Think, and weep for grief and love!
III.
Flow, ye tears, though in your streaming
Oft yon stars of his grow dim!
Sweet the tender grief he wakens,
Blest the tears that flow for him!'
Richard Storrs Willis.
The Geography of Roses.
Wherever man has found a dwelling-place, bounteous nature has conferred on him not only the necessaries of life, but a share also of its pleasures. From "sultry India to the pole," the useful and the beautiful are met with side by side. The bright poppy and the blue cornflower rise with the wheat-ear in the same broad field; the sweet-smelling amaryllis and the delicate iris unfold their variegated petals among the thick stalks of the African maize, while the marsh-rose and the water-lily float on the surface of the waters that inundate the rice-grounds of Egypt and India.
It is evident that nature regards these fair blossoms as indispensable to man's happiness as those other more substantial gifts are to his comfort and existence; and so, with lavish hand, she scatters them on the mountain and in the valley, amidst plains of burning sand, or half-buried in snow and ice.
"Floral apostles! that in dewy splendor
Weep without woe, and blush without a crime,
Oh! may I deeply learn, and ne'er surrender,
Your law sublime.
"Not useless are ye, flowers! though made for pleasure.
Blooming o'er field and wave, by day and night,
From every source your sanction bids me treasure
Harmless delight.
"Ephemeral sages! what instructors hoary
For such a world of thought could furnish scope?
Each fading calyx a memento mori,
Yet fount of hope."
The rose, fairest of the floral train, has been said by some botanists to take its birth in Asia. "The east, the cradle of the first man," writes a French author, "is also the native place of the rose; the flowery hillsides near the chain of the frowning Caucasus were the first spots on earth adorned with this charming shrub." We do not incline to this opinion, for the researches of science have proved that the lovely flower is found in every clime, from the arctic circle to the torrid zone, and that under every sun it seems to be endowed with some different grace. The same species is sometimes met with over a whole continent; another is unknown beyond the limits of a certain province; while another again never leaves the mountain or dale where it first shed its sweetness on the air. Thus Pollin's rose (rosa Pollinaria) is never found but at the foot of Monte Baldo in Italy, nor the Lyon rose (rosa Lyonii) out of the State of Tennessee; while the field-rose (rosa arvensis) trails its long branches and clusters of white flowers all over Europe, and the dog-rose (rosa canina) displays its pale pink petals and scarlet hips, not only throughout Europe, but also in northern Asia and a part of America.
So numerous, indeed, are the varieties of this favorite of nature, that we will not attempt to describe all that are peculiar to each country; we will confine our attention to those only most remarkable for their beauty, and most easy of culture.
First on the list of American roses, and far away among the eternal ice that covers the almost desert regions which lie between the seventieth and seventy-fifth degrees of north latitude, blooms rosa blanda, the charming soft-colored rose, which as soon as the sun has melted the snow in the valleys opens its large corolla, always solitary on its graceful stem, to the warm breathings from the south. We can picture to ourselves the delight of the stunted, amphibious Greenlander, when, the long months of the fierce winter past, he suddenly meets the expanding blossom. He smiles as he remembers how his young wife mourned last year over the death of the flowers, and he plucks the first rose of Greenland's short summer to carry back to her as a proof that she must ever hope and trust.