GO, LOVELY ROSE
“Go, Lovely Rose: is a love poem. It
is written by a Cavalier Poet Edmund Waller( 1606-87). According to the history
of English literature the characteristics of Cavalier poetry were
straightforward language, celebration of the social and material pleasures of
life, and a sense that one should enjoy these pleasures while one can since
both they and life are fleeting,
The
most notable Cavalier Poets were: Robert Herrick (1591-1674), Richard Lovelace
(1617-1657). Thomas Carew (1595-1640), Sir John Suckling 1609-1642), and Edmund Waller who has been mentioned above
for his poem “Go, Lovely Rose.”
Love should be enjoyed by the true
lovers without wasting any time. The English poet-playwright William
Shakespeare (1564-1616) said in his famous song :O Mistress Mine” in the play “Twelfth Night, Act 11, Scene3: “In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss
me, sweet and twenty,/Youth’s stuff will not endure.”
What follows is Edmund Waller’s full
poem in which the rose which itself shows its beauty for a short time, and then disappears , has been used as a
messenger.
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,
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
Then die! that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
******
The
English poet Henry Kirke White (1785-1806) added the following stanza to the
poem:
Yet, though thou fade,
From thy dead leaves let fragrance
rise,
And teach the maid
The goodness Time’s rude hand fades,
The virtue lives when beauty dies.
*******
G.R.Kanwal
16 June 2026
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