Thousands and thousands of poems have been written in praise of this flower, ever since Sappho sang to her lyre the words "Ho! the rose! Ho! the rose!" Sir Henry Wotton wrote: You Violets that first appear, By your pure purple mantles known, Like the proud virgins of the year, As if the Spring were all your own, What are you when the Rose is blown? And Hood sang: The Cowslip is a country wench; The Violet is a nun; But I will woo the dainty Rose The queen of every one. And Shelley: And the rose, like a nymph to the bath addrest, Which unveiled the depths of her glowing breast, Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air, The soul of her beauty and love laid bare. Shelley's "fold after fold" reminds us that Ruskin points out that one of the rose's beauties is that her petals make shadows over and over again of their own loveliness. Dr. Forbes Watson has, perhaps, been the most successful of all writers in putting into words the reasons why the rose has such power over mankind: "The flower has something almost human about it--warm, breathing, soft as the fairest cheek; of white, no longer snowy like the narcissus, but flushed with hues of animating pink; either flower, white or red, being alike symbolical of glowing, youthful passion." In the East the rose gardens have been famed for centuries. The flower is said to burst into bloom at the voice of the nightingale. The poet Jami says: "You may place a handful of fragrant herbs of flowers before the nightingale, yet he wishes not in his constant heart for more than the sweet breath of his beloved rose." It is said that an Arabian doctor discovered the recipe for rose-water in the Tenth Century; but the perfume may be older than that. The _Rosa centifolia_ is the blossom used. The Indians and Persians have known how to make their attar of rose for centuries.