"A Match", line 1.
Poems and Ballads (1866-89)
Context: If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pasture or gray grief;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf.
“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)
“A Thought about Ourselves,” p. 122
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Hopelessness”
Divan 1740:1-3, as translated by Fatemeh Keshavarz in Reading Mystical Lyric : The Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi (1998)
“Strew on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew.
In quiet she reposes:
Ah! would that I did too.”
"Requiescat" (1853), st. 1
Part I, section xxii, stanza 11
Maud; A Monodrama (1855)
To The Rose Upon The Rood Of Time
The Rose (1893)
Context: Come near, come near, come near — Ah, leave me still
A little space for the rose-breath to fill!
Lest I no more hear common things that crave;
The weak worm hiding down in its small cave,
The field-mouse running by me in the grass,
And heavy mortal hopes that toil and pass;
But seek alone to hear the strange things said
By God to the bright hearts of those long dead,
And learn to chaunt a tongue men do not know.
Come near; I would, before my time to go,
Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:
Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.
Final television interview with Melvyn Bragg (5 April 1994)
