The Red Rose and the Nightingale

… two silhouettes below the blossom…

 

‘Rosa Meditativa’ - Salvador Dali

 

To Natalie

(as I wrote on her birthday card a few years ago…)

 

Life is not a bed of roses –

We kiss the pain the minute we are born

And I am glad,

For, it’s the rose that causes

Much greater bane

When in your heart it stabs its thorn!

                         

So did a nightingale once chirp, they say,

And singing its most precious song

It passed away…

The scarlet sweetness of its blood

Thus oozed onto the Rose’s bud

To keep in rain, in hail, in snow

The crimson beauty of its Glow…

 

 

 

Links to “The Nightingale and the Rose” - a beautiful short story by Oscar Wilde:

Bulgarian: story

English: story

Spanish: story

Russian: story

French: story