H. B. Marriott Watson

“ To-day I have put by the prodigious achievements of human art, and am living in the supreme hour of the rose. The town is ablaze with roses; the very streets and houses breathe them to my nostrils. For I have risen with the whimsey in my head, and all Nature is one blushing rose. The air is scented with the summer rain; the squares are joyous. There comes my mistress with a red rose at her bosom this merry morning. Drops sparkle between the petals; she wears the first white garment of the year; everywhere is a rose—a rose. ”

“ No thought interrupts the sprightly march of her sensations; life throbs in her body; and the rose is dancing over her heart to the beat of her gaieties.
On this rosy morning the flowers are vivid on their bunches. They wake and stir together, one might say; they, too, have the spirit of youth. And this rose on the bosom of my mistress, afire with its pride of place, grows garrulous and jocund, and lives at the heat and pace of fever. See now, as she nears me, how it calls in its exhilaration to the roses in her face! In and out they blow and fade, trepidant and precipitate ”

“ Her soul creeps up the sky to the meridian, and in the light and warmth of her being the roses bud and blow in her possession. To-day the morning rings with gaiety. If you would see Aurora newly lighted upon the earth with her sweet dimples, here is the vision at your doors, ye modern men of London! There are no softer smiles than hers, there is no shyer ecstasy. Each step makes music in her ears; each glance espies battalions of delight; with each breath she has thrills of the world and its mystery. ”