'The full rose, in its glory, is like the sun, Thou seest all its leaves, each like unto the moon.' It was therefore one of the flowers of Light. Its color was that of the Aurora--not in Homer alone, but in all ancient song, Dawn is rosy-fingered, rosy-hued. This resemblance to the morning is beautifully set forth by Ausonius: 'There Paestan roses blushed before my view, Bedropped with early morning's freshening dew; 'Twere doubtful if the blossoms of the rose Had robbed the morning, or the morning those: In dew, in tint the same, the star and flower, For both confess the Queen of Beauty's power. Perchance their sweets the same; but this more nigh Exhales its breath, while that embalms the sky: Of flower and star the goddess is the same, And both she tinged with hues of roseate flame.' As the warmest floral type of love, of light, of revelling, and of the glowing dawn, the Rose became naturally the symbol of Youth. Here again, some decided resemblance was, as usual, required, and it was found in the Blush, the most characteristic, as well as the most beautiful, indication of affinity in early life between the moral and physical nature. Youth is the rose-time of love, the June of its summer; its hours are those of the morning-star of life, and of its dawn; the lover is the bud, the bride the blushing flower expanding in perfume. Every resemblance in it refers to _incipient_ life. The Bud is GOD, or Buddh', as the procreating deity, while the opening flower is the conceiving Aphrodite. All is early and transitory. The tendency of roses to quickly fade has given the poets of every land a most obvious simile for 'fleeting youth.' 'Go, lovely rose! Tell her that wastes her time and me, That now she knows, When I resemble her to thee, How sweet and fair she seems to be! * * * * * 'Then die, that she The common fate of all things rare May read in thee-- How small a part of time they share That are so wondrous sweet and rare.' In connection with youth, freshness, and blushes, the rose became, naturally enough, a type of reality and of natural truth. So in Hafiz: 'Can cheeks where living roses blow, Where nature spreads her richest dyes, Require the borrowed gloss of Art?' The deepest and most solemn mystery which the Nature-love of the earliest times attached to every object, was that it reflected its very opposite, and must always be regarded as identified with it in a primitive origin, in which both existed undeveloped. So we have seen that the rose, while female as the _expanding_ flower, was yet male as the _contracted_ bud. As a symbol of joyousness, youth, light, beauty, and the blushing dawn, it was eminently the floral type of _life_--a simile which has been employed by the poets of every land, Spenser among others: