If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,
From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.”
Somerset.—“Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.”
Warwick.—“And here I prophesy—this brawl to-day.
Grown to this faction in the Temple garden,
Shall send, between the red rose and the white,
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.”
There are no red or white roses blooming here now, but quantities of chrysanthemums grow along the paths under the elms and lime-trees. An enormous basket, overrun with ivy, handle and all, stands near the old Elizabethan Hall where Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was performed during the author's lifetime, and where the benchers of the Middle Temple now dine off long oaken tables in the light of emblazoned windows, and beneath the eyes of kings depicted by Vandyck and other great painters.