Rose Under the summer roxes When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wuld red lea Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions. Carl Sandburg, Under the Harvest Moon Let our bangquet have roses ... Horace, Odes, 1.36.15 What would the feast of life be like without the “flagrant crimson” or the chaste simplicity, the playful exuberance, or the serene composure of the rose? For atleast six millennia, its five-petaled wild ancestors and their thousands of cultivated descendants have de- lighted the eye, soothed the soul toa myriad human rites and passages, Appealing to the haughty as wellas the humble, roses evoke the evanes- ence of innocence and youth, enwreathe the vietor, fray Malize the martyr, are woven into flags of nation. banners of royal bloodlines. Above all, inall its earthly and heavenly hues 4nd have Wat and aha tie PFESEME the one we loved the longing for something name. he form and eolor : Perum that “sudden 21" of roses, and in - lies on the ai il ” (Rilke, 149)—th, ae, seed Mat both beckons and mysteriously and borne testimony jome being tended by ange Bose a, ee decorating a florid ‘nee Beene aera or oa Ca enhanced rian Veni been used against plague, washed ang pu. Bay pie tise tel Outta bee incorporated i, the preparation and burial of the dead. The scent of ee Eaemneie ae popular, for the longer time, of any flower's fragrance, evoking both the sedus, tive love magic of Cleopatra, and the “odour of sang. tity” of the Virgin Mary. Though roses are associate] with several male deities, they are preeminently the flower of the Great Goddess, resonant of her sensual ity, fertility and regal compassion. Sacred to Venus (Aphrodite), they float on the wind in Botticeli i. mous painting of her birth from Ocean; the devotes of the Phrygian Cybele “shadow the Mother and he retinue with a snow of roses” (Lucretius Carus, 2677) Andin Apuleius’ second-century novel The Golden As, though roses are the antidote for the magie-gone-amuch that has transformed the hero Lucius into a donkey, they are always just out of reach until strategically Placed in a festive Procession for the Egyptian goddess Isis, who. subsequently calls Lucius to priestly service. For alchemists, the entire process of peyche transformation takes Place sub rosa (under the rose): Denoting silence, the phrase purportedly originatedia the story of Eros’ gift of of silence, in grateful farding the illicit am Inalchemy, however, and red rose not onl: Tecognition of his discretion ours of Eros’ mother Aphrodite the crossed ranches othe is allude to the “love asi” “marriage” of opposite natures, and to the albedo Scanned with CamScanner