Chapter Rose to Rosse of R by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Rose to Rosse

Rose. On mount Calasay (the Indian Olympus) is a table on which lies a silver rose that contains two women, as bright and fair as pearls; one is called Brigasiri (“lady of the mouth”), and the other Tarasiri (“lady of the tongue”), because they praise God without ceasing. In the centre of the rose is the triangle or residence of God.—Baldæus.

And when the bell hath sounded,
The Rose with all the mysteries it surrounded,
The Bell, the Table, and mount Calasay,
The holy hill itself with all thereon…
Dissolves away.
   —Southey: Curse of Kehama, xix. II (1809).

Rose (Couleur de), an exaggerated notion of the excellence or goodness of something, produced by hope, love, or some other favourable influence. Love, for example, sees the object beloved through a medium of heart-joy, which casts a halo round it, and invests it with a roseate hue, as if seen through glass tinted with rose-pink. Hence the lover says of Maud—

Rosy is the west, rosy is the south;
Roses are her cheeks, and a rose her mouth.
   —Tennyson: Maud, xvii. (1855).

Rose Dartle, in David Copperfield, a novel by Dickens (1849).

Rose Mackenzie, the first wife of Clive Newcome, and daughter of “The Old Campaigner,” i.e. Mrs. Mackenzie.—Thackeray: The Newcomes (1855).

Rose of Arragon (The), a d rama by S. Knowles (1842). The rose is Olivia, daughter of Ruphino (a peasant), married to prince Alonzo of Aragon. The king would not recognize the match, but sent his son to the army, and made the cortez pass an act of divorce. A revolt having been organized, the king was dethroned, and Almagro was made regent. Almagro tried to marry Olivia, and to murder her father and brother; but the prince, returning with the army, made himself master of the city, Almagro died of poison, the marriage of the prince and peasant was recognized, the revolt was broken up, and order was restored.

Rose of Harpocrate. Cupid gave Harpocrate a rose, to bribe him not to divulge the amours of his mother Venus.

Red as a rose of Harpocrate.
   —Mrs. Browning: Isobels Child, iii.

Rose of Paradise.The roses which grew in paradise had no thorns. “Thorns and thistles” were unknown on earth till after the Fall (Gen. iii. 18). Both St. Ambrose and St. Basil note that the roses in Eden had no thorns, and Milton says, in Eden bloomed “Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.”—Paradise Lost, iv. 256 (1665).

Rose of Raby, the mother of Richard III. This was Cecily, daughter of Ralph de Nevill of Raby, first earl of Westmoreland. Her husband was Richard duke of York, who was slain at the battle of Wakefield, in 1460. She died 1495.

Rose of York,the heir and head of the York faction.

When Warwick perished, Edmond de la Pole became the Rose of York, and if this foolish prince should be removed by death…his young and clever brother [Richard] would be raised to the rank of Rose of York.—W. Hepworth Dixon: Two Queens.

Roses (War of the). The origin of this expression is thus given by Shakespeare—

Plant. Let him that is a true-born gentleman…
If he supposed that I have pleaded truth,
From off this briar pluck a white rose with me.
Somerset.. Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.