WITHIN the garden’s peaceful scene,
Appear’d two lovely foes,
Aspiring to the rank of queen,—
The Lily and the Rose.The Rose soon redden’d with rage:
And swelling with disdain,
Appeal’d to many a poet’s page,
To prove her right to reign.The Lily’s height bespoke command,
A fair imperial flower;
She seemed designed for Flora’s hand,
The sceptre of her power.This civil bickering and debate,
The goddess chanced to hear,
And flew to save ere yet too late,
The pride of the parterre.“Yours is,” she said, “the nobler hue,
And yours the statelier mien;
And, till a third surpasses you,
Let each be deemed a queen.Let no mean jealousies pervert your mind,
A blemish in another’s fame to find;
Be grateful for the gifts that you possess.
Nor deem a rival’s merit makes yours less.–William Cowper
I love this little poem by the eighteenth-century poet, hymnodist, and abolitionist, William Cowper. Ever wonder who first came up with the phrase “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform?” Well, wonder no more! It’s from Cowper’s poem, Light Shining Out of Darkness.
While most of the criticism I’ve read of The Lily and the Rose frames the flowers as metaphors for two different women, the lily (regal, cool, and queenly) and the rose (angry, flushed and emotional) having a bit of a catfight, I beg to differ. I believe they’re different sides of the same woman, the pure and virginal (lily) and the sensuous and earthy (rose). To put it a bit more vulgarly, there are men who hope that their “woman” will be “an angel on the streets and a whore between the sheets.” (At least, this is what a (male) friend told me. I’ve led a sheltered life. I wouldn’t know.) But I do know that there’s more to most people, men and women, than meets the eye.
Thus the image on the site header, the two flowers intertwined. Because I believe that Flora, Roman goddess of flowers, who’s called upon to mediate the scrum, knows that the two competing interests are part of the same whole, and that’s why she says, “let each be deemed a queen.”
Let no mean jealousies pervert your mind,
A blemish in another’s fame to find;
Be grateful for the gifts that you possess.
Nor deem a rival’s merit makes yours less.
Let’s not be mean. Let’s not be jealous. Let’s not wish we are other than who we are, or that things are other than what they seem. And let’s get on with it.
As for the tagline, “All Purls. No Swine.” Please forgive my knitterly indulgence. But I’m sure the message is clear. Matthew 7:6.