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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649)

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

Sweet Rose, Whence Is This Hue?

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649)

SWEET rose, whence is this hue

Which doth all hues excel?

Whence this most fragrant smell?

And whence this form and gracing grace in you?

In fair Paestana’s fields perhaps you grew,

Or Hybla’s hills you bred,

Or odoriferous Enna’s plains you fed,

Or Tmolus, or where boar young Adon slew;

Or hath the Queen of Love you dyed of new

In that dear blood, which makes you look so red?

No, none of those, but cause more high you blissed,

My lady’s breast you bore, her lips you kissed.