February 25, 2021
Roses in art and poetry (March)
In this Newsletter
Poem of the Month
Image of the Month
Roses image from my Black & White Photography collection
Roses in Poetry Book
Poem of the Month
from Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May
by Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
Image of the Month
Gather ye Rosebuds (1909) by John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), Fairlight Arts Trust, Hastings
Waterhouse created two paintings inspired by the above poem, one in 1908 and one in 1909, the latter shown here.
Roses from the wonderful Bushey Rose Garden
https://www.busheyrosegarden.org/
Photograph taken by the author.
Roses in Poetry Book
The poem of the month and the image of the month are included in the Roses in Poetry book, one of our three new A6 illustrated gift books.
The Rose in Poetry | Lone Fox Publishing
We often think of the rose as a symbol of love but this collection reveals that it can be so much more. In contrast to its association with love, beauty, purity and perfection, it is also used to signify the loss of romantic hope, crushed dreams, the evocation of beloved places and the passing of time and withering of youth. Reflecting on the budding rose the great Italian Renaissance poet Torquato Tasso wrote: ‘So, in the passing of a day, doth pass / The bud and blossom of the life of man’ (transl. Edward Fairfax). Drawing on the works of poets as diverse as Horace and Shakespeare and the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore and W.B. Yeats, this collection, rich in metaphor and allusion, brings together a wealth of images where the rose, in the words of Christina Rossetti ‘sets the world on fire’. If you mourn The Last Rose of Summer with Thomas Moore and can imagine throwing a rose at a Pierrot with Sara Teasdale, admire Waterhouse’s two popular paintings entitled Gather ye Rosebuds and the botanical precision of the art of Pierre-Joseph Redouté, this is the book for you.
