Yet, sweetest, with your leave I’ll take the rose, For there’s a moral in it.—Look you here. ’Tis fair, and sweet, and in its clustered leaves It carries balmy dew: a precious flower, And vermeil-tinctured, as are Hebe’s lips. Yet say, my Mariana, could you bear To gaze for ever only upon this, And fling the rest of Flora’s casket by? MARIANA. No, truly—I would bind it up with more, And make a fitting posy for my breast. If I were stinted in my general choice, I’d crop the lily, tender, fresh, and white,— The shrinking pretty lily—and would give Its modest contrast to the gaudier rose. What next? some flower that does not love the day— The dark, full-scented night-stock well might serve To join the other two. FIRMILIAN. A sweet selection! Think’st thou they’d bloom together on one breast With a united fragrance? MARIANA. Wherefore not? It is by union that all things are sweet. FIRMILIAN. Thou speakest well! I joy, my Mariana, To find thy spirit overleaps the pale Of this mean world’s injurious narrowness! Never did Socrates proclaim a truth More beautiful than welled from out thy lips— “It is by union that all things are sweet.” Thou, darling, art my rose—my dewy rose— The which I’ll proudly wear, but not alone. Dost comprehend me? MARIANA. Ha! Firmilian— How my eyes dazzle! FIRMILIAN. Let me show you now The lily I have ta’en to bind with thee. [_He brings_ LILIAN _from the summer-house_. MARIANA. Is this a jest, Firmilian? FIRMILIAN. Could I jest With aught so fair and delicate as this? Nay, come—no coyness! Both of you embrace. Then to my heart of hearts— MARIANA. Soft you a moment! Methinks the posy is not yet complete. Say, for the sake of argument, I share My rights with this pale beauty—(for she’s pretty; Although so fragile and so frail a thing, That a mere puff of April wind would mar her)— Where is the night-stock? FIRMILIAN _brings_ INDIANA _from the tool-house_. Here! MARIANA. A filthy negress! Abominable! LILIAN. Mercy on me! what blubber lips she has! MARIANA, _furiously to_ FIRMILIAN.