Explore "O Rose Divine" by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In which she morally censures a rose, and thereby all that resemble it
O rose divine, in gentle cultivation / you are, with all your fragrant subtlety, / tuition, purple-hued, to loveliness, / snow-white instruction to the beautiful; / intimation of a human structure, / example of gentility in vain, / in whose one being nature has united / the joyful cradle and the mournful grave; / how haughty in your pomp, presumptuous one, / how proud when you disdain the threat of death, / then, in a swoon and shriveling, you give / a withered vision of a failing self; / and so, with your wise death and foolish life, / in living you deceive, dying you teach!