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Writer's pictureEugenia Russell

‘O my luve’s like a red, red rose’ and other beautiful quotations about roses



So, in the passing of a day, doth pass

The bud and blossom of the life of man


Torquato Tasso (1544–1595), Jerusalem Delivered (Gerusalemme Liberata), Verses XIV & XV, Canto 16, translated by Edward Fairfax (1560–1635)


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Image:

Rosa indica vulgaris by Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759ꟷ1840)


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No April can revive thy wither’d flowers,

Whose blooming grace adorns thy beauty now


Samuel Daniel (1562–1619), Poem 31 from Delia (1592 version)


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O my luve’s like a red, red rose,

That’s newly sprung in June:

O my luve’s like the melodie,

That’s sweetly played in tune.


Robert Burns (1759–1796), A Red, Red Rose


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Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,

And on her silver cross soft amethyst,

And on her hair a glory, like a saint:

She seem’d a splendid angel, newly drest


John Keats (1795–1821), from The Eve of St Agnes (XXV)


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It was not in the Winter

Our loving lot was cast;

It was the time of roses—

We pluck’d them as we pass’d!


Thomas Hood (1798–1845), Ballad: Time of Roses


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The rose-lipt girls are sleeping

In fields where roses fade.


Alfred Edward Housman (1859–1936), from A Shropshire Lad (LIV)


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All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old, (...)

Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.


William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), The Lover Tells Of the Rose In His Heart


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They are not long, the days of wine and roses


Ernest Dowson (1867–1900), Vitae Summa Brevis


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