ROSES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21304, 25 March 1939, Page 2 (Supplement)

ROSES

For over a month now it has been roses, roses all the way. In quiet lanes they blow pink and white, and in our gardens are queenly flowers, peerless for scent and beauty. The emblem of England, roses have been prized round the world and down the ages. The Persians have their feast of roses; the rose of Sharon was sung of in Bible times; and the first Romans to come to Britain sent word to Italy that they were glad to find this outpost of empire a land of roses. Numberless Varieties No one knows how many kinds of roses there are, for they have been cultivated for thousands of years. We have our wild roses, so frail that they have even a shorter time to stay than Herrick’s daffodils. Our garden roses are the gift of generations of patient cultivation; and to-day the varieties of tea roses, climbing or rambling roses, and hybrid perpetuals are more than we can hope to number. The Moss Rose came from South Russia about 1595, and the Damask Rose reached us from Syria about 20 years earlier. The French rose was new in England in Shakespeare’s day, and the Japanese rose was introduced less than 100 years ago. Wonderful blooms has the Scented Tea rose. The Gloire de Dijon, Independence Day (with almost golden petals), Prince de Bulgaria, Lady Hillingdon, Conrad F. Meyer, and the incomparable white of the Frau Karl Druschki, are all roses of rare wonder and charm. The Paragon of Flowers From the earliest times roses have been esteemed above almost all other flowers. People of many lands have thought of the rose as the paragon of flowers, peerless for

perfection. The Madonna has been called the Mystical Rose. St. Dorothea has long been shown carrying a basket .of roses. St. Elizabeth of Portugal is always shown with roses in her hands or on her head and many of the lesser-known saints are portrayed with roses in their crowns. The fourth Sunday in Lent is still known as Rose Sunday, and the Pope still keeps up the delightful custom of giving a golden rose to a woman who has rendered beautiful and noble service. England has roses carved in wood and stone and painted on glass. We find them in our churches, for after the long and bitter struggles of the Wars of the Roses Henry the Seventh combined the White Rose of York and the Red Rose of Lancaster as the emblem of peace. To-day the rose stands as the symbol for a united England. A Lovely Old Custom But roses are found on roofs far beyond England’s shores. In manycouncil chambers, on the richly carved or painted or moulded ceilings of a host of fine houses and palaces in Europe, we may look up and see roses. The Greeks are said to have believed that Cupid gave

Harpocrates, the god of silence, a rose as a bribe. This old story may have been the begining of the phrase, under the rose. Paying rent with a rose is one of the oldest and loveliest of our old customs. The rent of one of Lord Brougham’s castles used to be a red rose paid at Carlisle once a year; and every year the West Kent Electric Company pays the Editor of the Children’s Newspaper a red rose for permission to run a cable under the drive leading to his house.