William Broome (1689–1745)

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

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;

Then haste thy beauties to disclose,

Queen of fragrance, lovely Rose!

Thou, beauteous flower, a welcome guest,

Shalt flourish on the fair one’s breast;

Shalt grace her hand, or deck her hair,

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!

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,

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;

Time must indent that heavenly brow,

And thou must be, what they are now.

This moral to the fair disclose,

Queen of fragrance, lovely Rose!