Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/238

140 The cheek of Beauty has ever been the allotted throne of this floral queen, and so it is, and will be; but alas! in many a fair face, the vermeil blush has given place to a pallid hue. 'Tis in the morning sunshine, and the hilly breeze, that the true-tinted rose is worn; but its fresh hues fade and blanch in the crowded saloon or the heated ball. It is of few votaries of dissipation's order that Herrick could say—

In order to display their own elegant invention in explanatory fables, the classic Bards of old feign the Rose to have been originally white; and divers are the causes assigned for its change of complexion. Herrick, versifying one fancy, tells us—

Another legend is, that Venus, hastening to protect Adonis, trod on the thorns of the rose, and, her foot being wounded, a few drops of her celestial blood served to make the flowers blush ever after for their cruelty to their patron divinity. Some Poets suppose the Rose to have sprung first, on this occasion, from the tears of Venus. Sir Walter Raleigh plaintively introduces this tradition in his poem of "the Shepherd to the Flowers."