Poems
The Rose Of May
Ah! there’s the lily, marble pale,
The bonny broom, the cistus frail;
The rich sweet pea, the iris blue,
The larkspur with its peacock hue;
All these are fair, yet hold I will
That the Rose of May is fairer still.
‘Tis grand ‘neath palace walls to grow,
To blaze where lords and ladies go;
To hang o’er marble founts, and shine
In modern gardens, trim and fine;
But the Rose of May is only seen
Where the great of other days have been.
The house is mouldering stone by stone,
The garden-walks are overgrown;
The flowers are low, the weeds are high,
The fountain-stream is choked and dry,
The dial-stone with moss is green,
Where’er the Rose of May is seen.
The Rose of May its pride displayed
Along the old stone balustrade;
And ancient ladies, quaintly dight,
In its pink blossoms took delight;
And on the steps would make a stand
To scent its fragrance – fan in hand.
Long have been dead those ladies gay;
Their very heirs have passed away;
And their old portraits, prim and tall,
Are mouldering in the mouldering hall;
The terrace and the balustrade
Lie broken, weedy and decayed.
But blithe and tall the Rose of May
Shoots upward through the ruin gray;
With scented flower, and leaf pale green,
Such rose as it hath never been,
Left, like a noble deed, to grace
The memory of an ancient race.
The bonny broom, the cistus frail;
The rich sweet pea, the iris blue,
The larkspur with its peacock hue;
All these are fair, yet hold I will
That the Rose of May is fairer still.
‘Tis grand ‘neath palace walls to grow,
To blaze where lords and ladies go;
To hang o’er marble founts, and shine
In modern gardens, trim and fine;
But the Rose of May is only seen
Where the great of other days have been.
The house is mouldering stone by stone,
The garden-walks are overgrown;
The flowers are low, the weeds are high,
The fountain-stream is choked and dry,
The dial-stone with moss is green,
Where’er the Rose of May is seen.
The Rose of May its pride displayed
Along the old stone balustrade;
And ancient ladies, quaintly dight,
In its pink blossoms took delight;
And on the steps would make a stand
To scent its fragrance – fan in hand.
Long have been dead those ladies gay;
Their very heirs have passed away;
And their old portraits, prim and tall,
Are mouldering in the mouldering hall;
The terrace and the balustrade
Lie broken, weedy and decayed.
But blithe and tall the Rose of May
Shoots upward through the ruin gray;
With scented flower, and leaf pale green,
Such rose as it hath never been,
Left, like a noble deed, to grace
The memory of an ancient race.
Analysis (ai): The poem uses a consistent quatrains-and-tercets structure with an ABABBC rhyme scheme, reinforcing rhythmic regularity typical of mid-19th-century lyric verse; its meter, primarily iambic tetrameter, reflects the period’s preference for musical cadence without significant formal deviation.
- Imagery and Setting: Natural imagery dominates, particularly floral elements symbolizing transience and continuity; the rose becomes a focal emblem distinguishing itself from contemporaneous blooms by its association with decayed aristocratic spaces rather than cultivated modernity.
- Theme of Decay and Continuity: Unlike contemporaneous nature poems celebrating progress or divine design, this work emphasizes ruination—architecture, lineage, and landscape all crumble, yet the rose persists, suggesting nature outlives human institutions without romanticizing their fall.
- Historical Context and Comparison: Compared to Howitt’s more didactic or moralizing works, especially those addressing temperance or labor, this poem is unusually quiet and observational, aligning more with Romantic retrospection than her usual social advocacy; it diverges from Victorian norms that often idealized rural renewal or imperial growth.
- Symbolism of the Rose: While commonly interpreted as a symbol of memory or nobility, the rose functions less as a nostalgic icon than as an agent of reclamation—the plant thrives precisely because the structures meant to contain and display it have failed.
- Less-Discussed Angle: Rather than honoring the aristocracy, the poem subtly inverts hierarchy: human artifice decays while the rose, once an ornament to elite taste, now claims autonomy, redefining legacy not as lineage but as ecological resurgence.
- Place in the Author’s Oeuvre: Among Howitt’s lesser-known literary poems, this one stands out for its restraint and avoidance of overt moral instruction, favoring symbolic ambiguity over the clarity seen in her children’s verse or social commentary.
- Linguistic Features: Archaic diction such as “bonny,” “quaintly dight,” and “blithe” constructs a temporal distance, aligning the speaker with the past’s aesthetic without fully inhabiting it, and lending a ritualized tone that resists sentimentality.
- Engagement with Time: The rose’s recurrence operates cyclically, contrasting with Victorian linear narratives of decline or advancement; its annual return suggests a natural order indifferent to human historical markers.
- Final Implication: The closing lines liken the rose to “a noble deed,” but this legacy is passive—not performed by people, but carried by nature, implying that remembrance is botanical, not cultural.
Mary Howitt
(1799 – 1888)
Mary Howitt
(12 March 1799 – 30 January 1888) was an English writer, editor, translator and a pioneer of the women’s rights movement in the UK. She is most known as the author of the famous poem The Spider and the Fly. She translated several works by Hans Christian Andersen and Frederika Bremer. Some of her works were written in conjunction with her husband, William Howitt. Many, in verse and prose, were intended for young people.
