Flores

I hate the flower of wood or common field. I cannot love the primrose nor regret The death of any shrinking violet, Nor even the cultured garden’s banal yield.

The silver lips of lilies virginal, The full deep bosom of the enchanted rose Please less than flowers glass-hid from frosts and snows For whom an alien heat makes festival.

I love those flowers reared by man’s careful art, Of heady scents and colours: strong of heart Or weak that die beneath the touch or knife,

Some rich as sin and some as virtue pale, And some as subtly infamous and frail As she whose love still eats my soul and life.             Theodore Wratislaw             Hothouse Flowers

(from Orchids, 1896)

flaventes odi flores odique nigrantes   quos vilis campus vile nemusque creant. cumque humiles violae, culti cum flosculus horti   vulgaris marcens deficit, haud doleo. miror virgineis argentea lilia labris   et gremio magicas multa tumente rosas. sed miror flores mage quos sub frigore servat   aestibus externis exhilarans hyalus. flores namque adamo quos ars alit anxia, flores   qui feriunt nasum percutiuntque oculos, et firmo qui corde valent, floresque caducos,   quos tactusve manus ferrea falxve necat. hi sunt virtutis purae pallore decori,   hi sceleri similes luxuriare solent, hi furtim infames, infirmi more puellae,   nunc quoque quae nostram rodit amata animam.