Roses

As this is my three hundredth post, I wanted to choose a subject close to my heart:


‘He walked past the couch to the open window, and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects.’

“There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion,” said Holmes, leaning with his back against the shutters. “It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary to our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”

The foregoing comes from the Sherlock Holmes adventure, “The Naval Treaty” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It shows that even in those early days, Doyle was a deep thinker on matters of religion and knew the importance of the natural world in determining the nature of God. The fact that he states deduction can be built up as an exact science by the religious reasoner, shows that even then, long before declaring he was a Spiritualist, he had been greatly influenced by the Spiritualist claims that it is a Science as well as a Religion and a Philosophy.

The rose is such a very special flower and it is small wonder so many great poets and authors have written with eloquence about it often linking it to love:
Robert Frost “Asking for Roses”:
'A word with you, that of the singer recalling--
Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is
A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,
And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.'

Roses by George Eliot

You love the roses - so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!

The Rose Family - by Louisa May Alcott

O flower at my window
Why blossom you so fair,
With your green and purple cup
Upturned to sun and air?
'I bloom, blithesome Bessie,
To cheer your childish heart;
The world is full of labor,
And this shall be my part.'
Whirl, busy wheel, faster,
Spin, little thread, spin;
The sun shines fair without,
And we are gay within.

The Grave and The Rose by Victor Hugo

The Grave said to the Rose,
"What of the dews of dawn,
Love's flower, what end is theirs?"
"And what of spirits flown,
The souls whereon doth close
The tomb's mouth unawares?"
The Rose said to the Grave.

The Rose said, "In the shade
From the dawn's tears is made
A perfume faint and strange,
Amber and honey sweet."
"And all the spirits fleet
Do suffer a sky-change,
More strangely than the dew,
To God's own angels new,"
The Grave said to the Rose.

A Little Budding Rose by Emily Bronte

It was a little budding rose,
Round like a fairy globe,
And shyly did its leaves unclose
Hid in their mossy robe,
But sweet was the slight and spicy smell
It breathed from its heart invisible.

A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns

O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.

The Rose did caper on her cheek by Emily Dickinson

The Rose did caper on her cheek --
Her Bodice rose and fell --
Her pretty speech -- like drunken men --
Did stagger pitiful --

Her fingers fumbled at her work --
Her needle would not go --
What ailed so smart a little Maid --
It puzzled me to know --

Till opposite -- I spied a cheek
That bore another Rose --
Just opposite -- Another speech
That like the Drunkard goes --

A Vest that like her Bodice, danced --
To the immortal tune --
Till those two troubled -- little Clocks
Ticked softly into one.

UPON ROSES by Robert Herrick

Under a lawn, than skies more clear,
Some ruffled Roses nestling were,
And snugging there, they seem'd to lie
As in a flowery nunnery;
They blush'd, and look'd more fresh than flowers
Quickened of late by pearly showers;
And all, because they were possest
But of the heat of Julia's breast,
Which, as a warm and moisten'd spring,
Gave them their ever-flourishing.

To A Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses by John Keats

As late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the skylark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert;—when anew
Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields;
I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields,
A fresh-blown musk-rose; 'twas the first that threw
Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew
As is the wand that Queen Titania wields.
And, as I feasted on its fragrancy,
I thought the garden-rose it far excelled;
But when, O Wells! thy roses came to me,
My sense with their deliciousness was spelled:
Soft voices had they, that with tender plea
Whispered of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquelled.


Without doubt the rose is a special gift for God to us all. No other flower moves us to such outpourings of praise and wonder and no other flower has been so nurtured by humanity so as to produce the amazing range of colours shapes and scents available today to the rose fancier. Although the rose is not mentioned specifically by William Cowper in this poem, I feel it could have been the flower that inspired the lines that return us to the sentiments expressed by Conan Doyle about nature and religion:

Go mark the matchless working of the power,
That shuts within the seed the future flower.