"Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep."

Few better things have been written than this, the second stanza of Jonson's
`Drink to me only with thine eyes' (`Gosse', p. 80):

"I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be.
But thou thereon did'st only breathe,
And sent'st it back to me;
Since when it grows and smells, I swear,
Not of itself, but thee."*

Even more felicitous, perhaps, is Waller's `Go, lovely rose!' which is at once
a compliment and a moral (`Gosse', p. 134):

"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,