n, of refined language, of
faultless and matchless melody, of these two passages, in which the same
image is used for the most opposite purposes;--first, in that song of
temptation, the sweetest note in that description of Acrasia's Bower of
Bliss, which, as a picture of the spells of pleasure, has never been
surpassed; and next, to represent that stainless and glorious purity
which is the professed object of his admiration and homage. In both the
beauty of the rose furnishes the theme of the poet's treatment. In the
first, it is the "lovely lay" which meets the knight of Temperance amid
the voluptuousness which he is come to assail and punish.

The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay:
Ah! see, whoso fayre thing doest faine to see,
In springing flowre the image of thy day.
Ah! see the Virgin Rose, how sweetly shee
Doth first peepe foorth with bashfull modestee,
That fairer seemes the lesse ye see her may.
Lo! see soone after how more bold and free
Her bared bosome she doth broad display;
Lo! see soone after how she fades and falls away.

So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre;
Ne more doth florish after first decay,
That earst was sought to deck both bed and bowre
Of many a lady, and many a Paramowre.
Gather therefore the Rose whilest yet is prime,
For soone comes age that will her pride deflowre;
Gather the Rose of love whilest yet is time,
Whilest loving thou mayst loved be with equall crime.

In the other, it images the power of the will--that power over
circumstance and the storms of passion, to command obedience to reason
and the moral law, which Milton sung so magnificently in _Comus_:--

That daintie Rose, the daughter of her Morne,
More deare then life she tendered, whose flowre
The girlond of her honour did adorne:
Ne suffred she the Middayes scorching powre,
Ne the sharp Northerne wind thereon to showre;
But lapped up her silken leaves most chayre,
When so the froward skye began to lowre;
But, soone as calmed was the christall ayre,
She did it fayre dispred and let to florish fayre.

Eternall God, in his almightie powre,
To make ensample of his heavenly grace,
In Paradize whylome did plant this flowre;
Whence he it fetcht out of her native place,
And did in stocke of earthly flesh e