I did get knocked down flat in front of the whole world, and I rose. I didn't run away - I rose right where I'd been knocked down. And then that's how you get to know yourself. You say, hmm, I can get up!
In the actual world--the painful kingdom of time and place--dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy.
The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But the theory now goes
That the apple's a rose,
And the pear is, and so's
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose -
But were always a rose.
The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change: Yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.
Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility.
Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty;
Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows
As false as dicers' oaths.
A red rose peeping through a white? Or else a cherry (double graced) Within a lily? Centre placed? Or ever marked the pretty beam, A strawberry shows, half drowned in cream? Or seen rich rubies blushing through A pure smooth pearl, and orient too? So like to this, nay all the rest, Is each neat niplet of her breast.