Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/235

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Shakspeare, in his "Love's Labour Lost," has this pretty and gallant speech, made by the courteous Boyet to the Princess and her ladies when masking:—

The beauty and perfume of the Rose are celebrated in those sweet sonnets of Shakspeare, so familiar to all lovers of true and graceful poetry.

Oh! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem

By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!

The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem

For that sweet odour which doth in it live.

The canker blooms have full as deep a dye

As the perfumed tincture of the roses;

Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,

When Summer's breath their masked buds discloses.

But for their virtue only is their show,

They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade;

Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so,

Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:

And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,

When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth.

Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,

Nor praise the deep vermillion in the rose;

They were but sweet, the figures of delight,

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.