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| QUEEN of fragrance, lovely Rose, | |
| The beauties of thy leaves disclose! | |
| The winter’s past, the tempests fly, | |
| Soft gales breathe gently through the sky; | |
| The lark sweet warbling on the wing | 5 |
| Salutes the gay return of Spring; | |
| The silver dews, the vernal showers, | |
| Call forth a bloomy waste of flowers; | |
| The joyous fields, the shady woods, | |
| Are cloth’d with green, or swell with buds; | 10 |
| Then haste thy beauties to disclose, | |
| Queen of fragrance, lovely Rose! | |
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| Thou, beauteous flower, a welcome guest, | |
| Shalt flourish on the fair one’s breast; | |
| Shalt grace her hand, or deck her hair, | 15 |
| The flower most sweet, the nymph most fair. | |
| Breathe soft, ye winds! be calm, ye skies! | |
| Alike ye flowery race, arise! | |
| And haste thy beauties to disclose, | |
| Queen of fragrance, lovely Rose! | 20 |
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| But thou, fair nymph, thyself survey | |
| In this sweet offspring of a day; | |
| That miracle of face must fail, | |
| Thy charms are sweet, but charms are frail: | |
| Swift as the short-liv’d flowers they fly, | 25 |
| At morn they bloom, at evening die: | |
| Though sickness yet a while forbears, | |
| Yet Time destroys what sickness spares; | |
| Now Helen lives alone in fame, | |
| And Cleopatra’s but a name; | 30 |
| Time must indent that heavenly brow, | |
| And thou must be, what they are now. | |
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| This moral to the fair disclose, | |
| Queen of fragrance, lovely Rose! | |
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