EDUMUND WALLER'S POEM - GO, LOVELY ROSE!

 

On the 16 th day of the Blog chatter’s #WRITEAPAGEADAY, Here is a poem with love as the major theme.

 

Poet:  Edmund Waller

Poem:  GO, Lovely Rose!

 

Go, lovely Rose!
Tell her that wastes her time and me, 
That now she knows, 
When I resemble her to thee, 
How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that's young, 
And shuns to have her graces spied, 
That hadst thou sprung 
In deserts where no men abide, 
Thou must have uncommended died.  

Small is the worth 
Of beauty from the light retired: 
Bid her come forth, 
Suffer herself to be desired, 
And not blush so to be admired.

Then die—that she 
The common fate of all things rare 
May read in thee; 
How small a part of time they share 
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!  

"Go, Lovely Rose" is lyric poem with four quatrains (four-line stanzas) in which the speaker addresses a rose he is sending to a young lady. It was first published in 1645 in Poems, a collection of Waller's works. It is among the most famous and most admired short poems in English literature. The poet adopts the common theme of carpe diem in the best tradition of Cavalier poetry, utilizing the easily recognizable symbol of the rose for a woman ripe for romance. In this version Waller establishes the rose as a go-between for the poet to his love, adopting the figurative language of personification.

Edmund Waller led a most adventurous life who was born 1605 at Coleshill in U.K. His reputation, as in so many cases, rests upon his songs: though he showed skill in the couplet afterwards used with such power by Dryden. He is graceful and accomplished always, on occasion fervent; and once at any rate, in his later years, highly imaginative.  Among his lyric verses, such pretty pieces as Go, Lovely Rose, and On a Griddle may be instanced.  Opportunistic as a man, his opportunism is equally clear in the readiness with which he adopts every new literary fashion.