'The whiles some one did chant this lovely lay: Ah see, who so fair thing dost fain to see, In springing flower the image of thy day; All see thy virgin ROSE, how sweetly she Doth first peep forth with bashful modesty, That fairer seems the less you see her may; Lo! see soon after, how more bold and free Her bared bosom she doth broad display; Lo! see soon after, how she fades and falls away. 'So passeth, in the passing of a day Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower, Nor more doth flourish after first decay, That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower Of many a lady, many a paramour: Gather the rose of love while yet in time, Whilst loving thou may'st loved be with equal crime.' But, as implying Life, the Rose also reflected Death, and this seemed to ray from the cruel thorns, which, as the German couplet says, remain after the leaves have vanished: 'The rose falls away, But the thorns ever stay.' 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.'