Thursday, May 29, 2025

Rosa 'Scepter's Isle' & small rose Rosa 'Queen of Sweden' 29 May 2025

 

Pink—small—and punctual— Emily Dickinson

1332

 

Pink—small—and punctual—

Aromatic—low—

Covert—in April—

Candid—in May—

Dear to the Moss—

Known to the Knoll—

Next to the Robin

In every human Soul—

Bold little Beauty

Bedecked with thee

Nature forswears

Antiquity—

 

My Rosemary often told me that I bought too many pink roses. But I mostly ignored her and kept at it. The roses in this scan have an interesting history particularly the myrr scented Rosa ‘Scepte’r Isle’ It is contained in John of Gaunt’s speech in Shakespeare’s Richard II.

 

“This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,

Fear’d by their breed and famous by their birth,

Renowned for their deeds as far from home,

For Christian service and true chivalry,

As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry

Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son,

This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,

Dear for her reputation through the world,

Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,

Like to a tenement or pelting farm:

England, bound in with the triumphant sea,

Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege

Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,

With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:

That England, that was wont to conquer others,

Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,

How happy then were my ensuing death!”

― William Shakespeare, Richard II

 

The other rose, Rosa ‘Queen of Sweden’ I paid $125 at a Vancouver Rose Society auction. I really wanted it. When I brought it home I found out I already had one. I have two of them.

 

Rosemary would forgive me and smile.

 

More Emily Dickinson

When everything that  ticked has stopped 

More Emily Dickinson blogs

 Doubly Grateful

A Slash of Blue

For I - inhabit Her

In Ceaseless Rosemary

The Morns are meeker

A Favourite Just Noticed 

All the Witchcraft that we need 

It only gives our wish for blue 

My heart is laden 

Of bronze and blaze

The red and the white 

A Lady Red

Hands 

I took my power in my hands 

That clarifies the sight 

 Nature rarer uses yellow

Rosemary white and a bit of yellow 

Nature rarer uses yellow

Luck is not chance 

T is iris sir 

The white heat

I tried to be a rose 

nature rarer uses yellow 

The Tulip

Nor would I be a poet 

November left then clambered up
You cannot make remembrance grow
November
the maple wears a gayer scarf 

 A melancholy of a waning summer
Just as green and as white
It's full as opera
I cannot dance upon my Toes
a door just opened on the street 
Amber slips away
Sleep
When August burning low
Pink Small and punctual
A slash of blue
I cannot dance upon my toes
Ah little rose
For hold them, blue to blue