And a far older Hindu proverb solemnly exclaims: 'Hast thou obtained thy wish; exult not: canst thou not see how the thorn pierces the finger at the same instant when the rose is gathered?'
Birth and Death, as typified in the Rose, and their mutual production, are beautifully expressed by Ausonius in the remainder of the poem already cited:
'I saw a moment's interval divide
The rose that blossomed from the rose that died.
This with its cap of tufted moss looked green;
That, tipped with reddening purple, peeped between;
One reared its obelisk with opening swell,
The bud unsheathed its crimson pinnacle;
Another, gathering every purpled fold,
Its foliage multiplied; its blooms unrolled,
The teeming chives shot forth; the petals spread;
The bow-pot's glory reared its smiling head;
While this, that ere the passing moment flew
Flamed forth one blaze of scarlet on the view,
Now shook from withering stalk the waste perfume,
Its verdure stript, and pale its faded bloom,
I marvelled at the spoiling flight of time,
That roses thus grew old in earliest prime.
E'en while I speak, the crimson leaves drop round,
And a red brightness veils the blushing ground.
These forms, these births, these changes, bloom, decay,
Appear and vanish in the self-same day.
The flower's brief grace, O Nature! moves my sighs,
Thy gifts, just shown, are ravished from our eyes.
One day the rose's age; and while it blows
In dawn of youth, it withers to its close.
The rose the glittering sun beheld at morn,
Spread to the light its blossoms newly born,
When in his round he looks from evening skies
Already droops in age, and fades, and dies.
Yet blest that, soon to fade, the numerous flower
Succeeds herself, and still prolongs her hour.
O virgins! roses cull, while yet ye may;
So bloom your hours, and so shall haste away.'
A Jewish legend declares that a famed cabalist was vainly pursued by Death through many forms. But at last the grim enemy changed himself into the perfume of a rose, which the magician—his suspicion lulled for the instant—inhaled, and died. In many German cities—Hildesheim, Bremen, and Lübeck among others—it is said that the death of a prebend is heralded by the discovery of a white rose under his seat in the cathedral. 'And,' as J. B. Friederich states (Symbolik und Mythologie der Natur, p. 225), 'in the Tyrol the rose has a deathly meaning, since it is there believed that whoever wears an Alpine rose in his hat during a thunderstorm will be struck by the lightning; for which reason it is called the thunder-rose—a name probably derived from the consecration of that flower to Donar, the god of thunder.'
The fantastic symbolism of the middle ages twined the Rose into innumerable capricious forms, few of which, however, have any direct derivation from Nature. Thus the Rose, from being typical of literal love, became that of Christ; from symbolizing the light of Aurora, it was made significant as the rose-window bearing the cross. The five-leaved rose indicated the love of God for Man, as set forth by His five wounds; while the eight-leaved typified that of the believer for the Lord. The Rose also emblemed the Virgin Mary, and from her was reflected through countless works of art and many legends, all of which are 'tenderly beautiful,' and, it may be added, generally rather silly—as, for instance, that of the holy friar Josbert of Doel, who sang daily five hymns in honor of the Virgin; in reward of which, immediately after his death, there grew from his mouth, ears, and nostrils, five roses, each marked with the words of a hymn. It has been usual to say much, of late years, of the 'child-like and earnest,' 'tender and trusting' spirit which inspired these saintly legends, and to praise with them the morbid delicacy of a Fra Angelico. Believe me, reader, when I say that no vigorous and healthy mind ever passed through a period of adoration for and cultivation of mediæval Roman Catholic Art, who did not eventually see that this naïve and innocent art-expression of the foulest, darkest, and most oppressive stage of history, had precisely the same foundation in truth as the love of the French court during the days of the Regency for a shepherd's life and child-like rural pleasures. A wicked and degraded age seeks for relief in contemplating its opposite; a healthy one—like the Greek—glories in itself, and strives to raise self to the highest standard of truth and beauty. None of the symbolisms of the middle ages grew directly from Nature—it was based on second-hand reveries, and on emblems from which all juice and life had been drained ages before in the East.
Yes—look at the beautiful Rose, radiant with dewdrops, ruddy in the morning light, or dreamily lovely, with the moonbeams melting through her moon-shaped petals. Unchanged since that primeval age when she was a living idol—a visible and blest presence of the Great Goddess of beauty and love—whether as Astarte or Ma Nerf Baaltis, Ashtaroth or Venus. Let her breathe in her fragrance of the far times when millions in a strange and busy age now forgotten thronged rose-garlanded to the temples; when, bearing roses, they gathered to wild worship at the Feast of the New Moon, under shady groves or in picturesque high places among the ancient rocks. Rose-breathing, rose-perfumed, amid sweetest music and black Assyrian eyes, in the gliding dance under thousands of brazen serpent lamps, or far in dusky fragrant forests, they adored the Rose Queen—the very visible spirit and incarnation of nature in her loveliest form. Over many a shining sea passed the barks, rose-wreathed, to the far isles of the South: she—the Rose—was there! From many a steep crag looked out on the blue ocean the temple of the Star Queen, the Heaven and Sea-born sister of the Rose: and she was there. Through beautiful temples the lover strayed to meet his love, and, taking the rose from her brow, won her in worship of the Serpent-light of Loveliness: for she, the Rose—the Mystery of all Rapture—was ever there! On coin and jewel, in prayer and song they bore the Rose-Venus to every land in a living, ever-thrilling romaunt—far goldener, more thrilling with poetry than was in later times the dull lay of De Loris and Clopinel: for wherever man found joy and beauty in life, feast, and song, she—the Rose Incarnate—was there. In the Rose was the twin sister of all the mysteries: we may read them as clearly in her, if we will, as ever did rapt Sidonian, or priest, or daughter of the Aryan, or whatever the early unknown burning race may have been, which built fire-towers in melting Lesbos, and names Cor-on, the crowned Corinthos, ere yet a syllable of Greek had ever rung on earth. She is the Cup; her calyx and dew reflect the goblet of life, and the nectar-wine of life, typical in early times of endless generation, in later days of re-generation. Born of the sea, she recalls the Cor-olla Cup-Ark in which Hercules—Arech El Es—crossed the sea between the rosy dawn and ruddy sundown, 'strength upborne by love and life.' She is the Morning Star which hovered over Aphrodite when the Queen rose from the sea, since each was either in that Trinity; as in later days the star shone on him who rose from Maria the sea, accompanied by Iona, the dove. She is the Shell and the Ark of so many ancient legends—that Ark into which life enters, and from which it is born—the Ark of Earth, in which Adon and the flowers sleep till Spring—the Ark of maternal Being, from which man is born—the exquisite and beautiful Rose. She is the Door or Gate of the Transition or Passing Through from death to life: wherever man enters, there is the Rose, and with her all the twin-symbols;—and when, bearing a rose, you chance to pass through some antique rock-gap, far inland, near a running stream, start not, reader, should a strange thrill, as of a solemn vanished life, sweep over you; for so surely as you live, know that in ancient days the footsteps of the rose-bearing worshipper went before you through that narrow pass, performing, by so doing, the rite typical of new birth, revival, and the Covenant. She is the cavern, the secret lair of life and the casket in which that one great arcanum and impenetrable secret of motherhood is forever concealed—forever and forever. They found it hidden—those priests of old—in Woman and in the Rose, in fruits, and in all that lives or grows; they traced the mystery up to godhood; they found it reflected in every object of reception and transit—in the temple, and house, and vase, and moon-like horns; they saw it in the woodland path, winding away in darkness among the trees; it lurked in seeds and nuts: man could crush the grape and burn the flower, but he could not solve the inscrutable mystery of generation and life; and so he hallowed it. Hail to thee, thou, its fairest earthly form, O Rose of sunlight and luxury and love!
In a 'Floral Dictionary' at hand, I find the rose means, 'genteel, pretty.' In another, twenty-four very different interpretations are ascribed to as many varieties of this flower. It is almost needless to say that the modern 'Language of Flowers' is, for the greater part, merely the arbitrary invention of writers entirely ignorant of the signification anciently attached to natural objects. The primary meaning of the rose is love; and it is a rose-garland, and not a tulip, which should stand for a 'declaration of passion,' and, at the same time, for a pledge of secrecy. Many of these modern fancies are, however, very beautiful; as, for instance, in that German lyric in which the Angel of the Flowers confers a fresh grace on the rose by veiling it in moss:
'And, robed in Nature's simplest weed,
Could there a flower that rose exceed?'
But our task is to investigate those antique meanings of flowers, that secret language of life and love consecrated to them for thousands of years, and now buried under forgotten lays, legends, and strange relics of art.