Flos Florae
Take thou this rose, O Rose! the loves in the rose repose:I with love of the rose am caught at the winter's close:Take thou this flower, my flower, and cherish it in thy bower:Thou in thy beauty's power shalt lovelier blow each hour:Gaze at the rose, and smile, my rose, in mine eyes the while:To thee the roses belong, thy voice is the nightingale's song:Give thou the rose a kiss, it blushes like thy mouth's bliss:Flowers in a picture seem not flowers, but flowers in a dream:Who paints the rose's bloom, paints not the rose's perfume.
Words in this poem
- shalt
- 2d per. sing. of Shall.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Flos Florae is in the public domain. This text is taken from Wine, Women, and Song Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse, Project Gutenberg ebook #18044; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: John Addington Symonds, Flos Florae, in Wine, Women and Song (1884), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #18044, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/symonds-wine-women/flos-florae.html, id L11838.
Form and metre
Flos Florae is 9 lines in a single stanza. 83% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 14.1 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABB----- reposeA · closeA · bowerB · hourB · while · song · bliss · dream · perfume
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Take thou this rose, O Rose! the loves in the rose repose: | 13 | ···········˘/ |
| I with love of the rose am caught at the winter's close: | 13 | ··········/˘· |
| Take thou this flower, my flower, and cherish it in thy bower: | 16 | ···/˘·/˘·/˘···/˘ |
| Thou in thy beauty's power shalt lovelier blow each hour: | 15 | ···/˘/˘······/˘ |
| Gaze at the rose, and smile, my rose, in mine eyes the while: | 13 | ············· |
| To thee the roses belong, thy voice is the nightingale's song: | 15 | ···/˘˘/····/˘˘· |
| Give thou the rose a kiss, it blushes like thy mouth's bliss: | 13 | ·······/˘···· |
| Flowers in a picture seem not flowers, but flowers in a dream: | 16 | /˘··/˘··/˘·/˘··· |
| Who paints the rose's bloom, paints not the rose's perfume. | 13 | ···/˘····/˘˘/ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.