_Ode Xxxviii._

While we invoke the wreathed spring, Resplendent rose! to thee we'll sing; Resplendent rose, the flower of flowers, Whose breath perfumes Olympus' bowers; Whose virgin blush of chasten'd dye, Enchants so much our mortal eye. When pleasure's bloomy season glows, The Graces love to twine the rose; The rose is warm Dione's bliss, And flushes like Dione's kiss! Oft has the poet's magic tongue The rose's fair luxuriance sung; And long the Muses, heavenly maids, Have rear'd it in their tuneful shades. When, at the early glance of morn, It sleeps upon the glittering thorn, 'Tis sweet to dare the tangled fence, To cull the timid flowret thence, And wipe with tender hand away The tear that on its blushes lay! 'Tis sweet to hold the infant stems, Yet dropping with Aurora's gems, And fresh inhale the spicy sighs That from the weeping buds arise. When revel reigns, when mirth is high, And Bacchus beams in every eye, Our rosy fillets scent exhale, And fill with balm the fainting gale! Oh! there is nought in nature bright, Where roses do not shed their light! When morning paints the orient skies, Her fingers burn with roseate dyes; The nymphs display the rose's charms, It mantles o'er their graceful arms; Through Cytherea's form it glows, And mingles with the living snows. The rose distils a healing balm, The beating pulse of pain to calm; Preserves the cold inurned clay, And mocks the vestige of decay: And when at length, in pale decline, Its florid beauties fade and pine, Sweet as in youth, its balmy breath Diffuses odour e'en in death! Oh! whence could such a plant have sprung? Attend--for thus the tale is sung.

When, humid, from the silvery stream, Effusing beauty's warmest beam, Venus appear'd, in flushing hues, Mellow'd by ocean's briny dews; When, in the starry courts above, The pregnant brain of mighty Jove Disclosed the nymph of azure glance, The nymph who shakes the martial lance! Then, then, in strange eventful hour, The earth produced an infant flower, Which sprung, with blushing tinctures drest, And wanton'd o'er its parent breast. The gods beheld this brilliant birth, And hail'd the Rose, the boon of earth! With nectar drops, a ruby tide, The sweetly orient buds they dyed, And bade them bloom, the flowers divine Of him who sheds the teeming vine; And bade them on the spangled thorn Expand their bosoms to the morn.