Explore "The Tea-Rose" by Théophile Gautier on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Most beautiful of all the roses / Is this half-open bud, whose bare, / Unpetalled heart a dream discloses / Of carmine very faint and fair.
I wonder, was it once a white rose, / Till butterfly too ardent spoke / A language soft, and in the light rose / A shyer, warmer tint awoke?
Its delicate fabric hath the colour / Of lovely and velutinous skin. / Its perfect freshness maketh duller / Environing hues incarnadine.
For as some rare patrician features / Eclipse the brows of ruddier gleam, / So masquerade as rustic creatures / Gay sisters of this rose supreme.
But, dear one, if your hand caress it, / And raise it for its sweet perfume, / Ere yet your velvet cheek shall press it, / 'T will fade before a fairer bloom.
No rose in all the world so tender, / That gloweth in the springtime fleet, / But shall its every charm surrender / Unto your seventeen years, my sweet.
A face hath more than petal's power: / A pure heart's blood that blushing flows / O'er youth's nobility, is flower / High sovereign over every rose.