by Clara

Young Flora stole one morn betimes,
As Phoebus op’d the gate of day,
Where herb and tree and floweret shines,
With limpid lustre in his ray.

The Goddess bent o’er every blossom,
The cool, the fragrant drop to sip,
Which deep within its opening bosom
Was treasured for her rosy lip.

The tears of night all brilliant now,
Hung on a rose’s snowy breast;
She gently kiss’d them off, when lo–
The floweret blush’d to be caressed.

Since, have its leaves retained the glow,
By modesty that moment given;
Forgot their pure, their tintless snow,
Though scarcely press’d by lips from Heaven.

The Essex County Park Commission built and planted the Weequahic Park rose garden in 1922, to a design by the Olmsted Brothers. It cost $2,353 and contained 86 varieties of roses, more than 1,400 plants in all. 

“The Blush-Rose” is from the Newark Daily Advertiser for July 24, 1832.