Fifty Shades of Roses

There are many things we can perhaps more easily say with flowers than with words. And flowers can say many things to us. So perhaps these poetic expressions of spoken words and flowery subject are a perfect match. Many would agree that there is one flower, the rose, that embodies both the human condition, its ambitions, its sacrifices and its symbolism of devoted love that together with its own peerless self; the beauty of its perfume, its hues and colours, its shapes and forms, from rambler and climber to the stately grace of a rose bed, and, of course, its thorns, to warn that consequences carry a price.Poets know that a rose is perhaps able to speak in many tongues on many subjects and it is therefore unsurprising that the rose is one of the great enduring symbols of the tradition in both Western and Eastern poetry. A rose can bring a tremble of the lip, or raise the beating of a heart. They can create a mood or simplify a feeling. Their message can be direct or nuanced but so often it is just perfect. Our classic poets from Hafiz, D H Lawrence, Robert Burns and Shakespeare, along with very many others, explore this beautiful living symbol with their exquisite lines and verse.1 - Fifty Shades of Roses - An Introduction2 - The Year of the Rose by Algernon Charles Swinburne3 - A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns4 - Rosa Rosarum by Agnes Mary Frances Robinson5 - Venus in the Garden by James Weldon Johnson6 - A White Rose by John Boyle O'Reilly7 - Rosa Mundi by Arthur Symons8 - Rose of All the World by D H Lawrence9 - To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick10 - Go Lovely Rose by Edmund Waller11 - To Roses in the Bosom of Castara by William Habington12 - Gloire de Dijon by D H Lawrence13 - Sonnet 130 - My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun by William Shakespeare14 - Sonnet 109 - O! Never Say That I Was False of Heart by William Shakespeare15 - My Rose by Hildegarde Hawthorn16 - A Ballad of Dreamland by Algernon Charles Swinburne17 - Roses of a Dream by Damon Runyon18 - Sonnet 54 - O! How Much More Doth Beauty Beauteous Seem by William Shakespeare19 - Sonnet 99 - The Forward Violet Thus Did I Chide by William Shakespeare20 - In an Eastern Rosegarden by Pirani Ameena Begum21 - Early Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke22 - No Rose That in a Garden Ever Grew by Edna St Vincent Millay23 - The Secret Rose by W B Yeats24 - The Rose by John Cournos25 - Where Roses Would Not Dare to Go by Emily Dickinson26 - Amid the Roses by Alice Dunbar Nelson27 - How Did the Rose by Hafiz28 - A Flower Given to My Daughter by James Joyce29 - To a Friend Who Sent Me Roses by John Keats30 - The Sweets of the Rose by Hafiz31 - A Rose by Sir Richard Fanshawe32 - The Rose Has Flushed Red by Hafiz33 - London Roses by Willa Silbert Cather34 - Laughing Rose by William Henry Davies35 - A Wild Rose by Alfred Austin36 - June by Francis Ledwidge37 - Tis the Last Rose of Summer by Thomas Moore38 - Virtue by George Herbert39 - Summer in England, 1914 by Alice Meynell40 - The Rose Has Left the Garden by Richard Le Gallienne41 - Summer is Ended by Christina Rossetti42 - Written in September, 1804 by Christian Milne43 - Love in Autumn by Sara Teasdale44 - September by George Arnold45 - An October Garden by Christina Georgina Rossetti46 - Winter Evening Hymn to My Fire by James Russell Lowell47 - My Winter Rose by Alfred Austin48 - Winter by Robert Louis Stevenson49 - The December Rose by Edith Nesbit50 - Winter Sunset by Katharine Tynan51 - Flowers by Thomas Hood