The Lily
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)
Hope is like a Harebell; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“For roses also blossom on the thorn,
And the fair lily springs from loathsome weed.”
Che de le spine ancor nascon le rose,
E d'una fetida erba nasce il giglio.
Canto XXVII, stanza 121 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)
“No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.”
"The Rose" (published c. 1648). Compare: "Flower of all hue, and without thorn the rose", John Milton, Paradise Lost, book iv. line 256.; "Every rose has it's thorn", Poison, "Every Rose Has Its Thorn".
Hesperides (1648)
“Her modest looks the cottage might adorn,
Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn.”
Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 329.
As translated in Spanish-American Poetry : A Dual-language Anthology (1996) by Seymour Resnick
Variant translation:
I cultivate a white rose
In July as in January
For the sincere friend
Who gives me his hand frankly. <p> And for the cruel person who tears out
the heart with which I live,
I cultivate neither nettles nor thorns:
I cultivate a white rose.
Simple Verses (1891), I Grow a White Rose
“A stranger's rose is but a thorn.”
In Alien Lands, translated by Leah W. Leonard.
Section 7 : Spiritual Progress
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: By what sort of experience are we led to the conviction that spirit exists? On the whole, by searching, painful experience. The rose Religion grows on a thorn-bush, and we must not be afraid to have our fingers lacerated by the thorns if we would pluck the rose.
