Flower Poetry Fridays: The Tulip and Eglantine

Welcome back to Flower Poetry Fridays with Mrs. Sigourney. Each Friday a new poem will be posted from her The Voice Of Flowers.

THE TULIP AND EGLANTINE.

Purple Robed Tulip
Purple Robed Tulip

THE Tulip called to the Eglantine ;
"Good neighbor, I hope you see
How the throngs that visit the garden come
To pay their respects to me.

"The florist admires my elegant robe,
And praises its rainbow ray,
Till it seems as if, through his raptured eyes
He was gazing his soul away."

"It may be so," said the Eglantine ;
"In a humble nook I dwell,
And what is passing among the great,
I cannot know so well.

Pink Pasture Rose
Pink Pasture Rose

But they speak of me, as the flower of love,
And that low, whispered name,
Is dearer to me, and my infant buds,
Than the loudest breath of fame."

So, I had to look up what an eglantine is. It’s commonly known as Sweet Briar and also as Eglantine rose, Rosa rubiginosa. Being native to Europe and western Asia, Eglantine has become an invasive species in parts of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

In North America we have a similar simple rose called the Pasture Rose, Rosa carolina.

Eglantine flowers are in hard-to-reach and thorny, out-of-the-way places so throngs of people don’t visit them in the fence rows. The Eglantine rose flower is happy to be a flower of love. It shuns the fame that the Proud Tulip adores for himself.

The Tulip is so full of himself he has to talk down to the lowly rose. Yet, the rose replies that he’s blessed with his family of buds and a place to call home.

The world would be a happier place if more people could be pleased with a simple eglantine life. Don’t you think?

Come back next Friday for the next installment in our series of flower poems from Mrs. Sigourney’s The Voice of Flowers, “The Blossom and the Beautiful”.

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