The Last Rose Of Summer
By Foy Valentine, Founding Editor
Just outside my study window a rose is blooming. It is a very special rose, the last rose of summer.
The rose is gorgeously red, exquisitely formed, deliciously fragrant, proudly and maybe even defiantly alone in my small rose garden, and a little bigger than it could be expected to be this late in the season, as if to show the world that it can thumb its nose at the approaching winter with its blue northers, its killing frosts, its dreadful ice storms, and its hard freezes.
I salute this last rose of summer-smartly, respectfully, admiringly.
It calls to mind the Russian folk tale (which I think I remember from Anton Chekov) of a man who had fallen off a high cliff but who had managed to grab hold of a small bush on his downward plunge. The bush itself was clinging precariously to life in a tiny crevice and was itself slowly turning loose of its hold. Facing certain death in a matter of minutes, the man saw a beautiful flower blooming at the side of the bush and could not resist the urge to put out his tongue to taste its single drop of precious nectar. What comes later will just have to come. For now, carpe diem, seize the day, savor the moment. Revel in this rose.
This last rose of summer also calls to mind Robert Browning`s immortal Rabbi Ben Ezra:
Grow old along with me.
The best is yet to be.
The last of life for which the first was made.
Youth shows but half.
Trust God, see all, nor be afraid.
This last rose of summer has called to mind again the story told by my good friend, Brooks Hays, said to be the best raconteur on the Washington scene since Abraham Lincoln. Brooks had just written a good book called This World A Christian`s Workshop.
Someone asked his father in northwestern Arkansas, "Mr. Hays have you read Brook`s last book? To which the elderly father replied, "I hope so." Who knows when the last book will have been written? Who knows when the last farewell will have been spoken? Who knows when the last cup of cold water will have been given? Some day the last rose will bloom.
This last rose of summer reminds me, too, of a wonderful old gospel song which my deacon Daddy, the song leader in our Pleasant Union Baptist Church where I grew up, used to sing, as my Aunt Ruby Johnson played the piano, "Work for the Night Is Coming." The last verse of this timely admonition to redeem the time is lodged warmly and redemptively in my mind,
Work for the night is coming,
Under the sunset skies;
While their bright tints are glowing,
Work for daylight flies.
Work till the last beam fadeth,
Fadeth to shine no more;
Work while the night is darkening,
When man`s work is o`er.
Yes. Everybody stand back. Let this beautiful blossom do its thing.
The last rose of summer could possibly make a wave of melancholy wash over me. Instead, it is flooding me with good memories of its predecessors which all summer long have graced and fragranced and blessed our house. There have been, occasionally big white ones, stunningly attractive yellow ones, traffic stopping pink ones, a new and inordinately prolific old-fashioned red one, and two kinds of orange red ones, one of which is so fragrant that its pervasive presence permeates any room where it is placed. Remembering all these beauties pushes aside any sadness that might attend my contemplation of what will very soon be happening to the specimen at hand. True enough, it is what Oliver Wendell Holmes called the last leaf upon the tree; but it is holding on, hanging in there, and bearing its own very special witness to anyone with eyes to see.
But now let`s face it. I am 81. Going on 82. Morbidness is not my stock-in-trade. I am not dwelling on my own imminent demise. I am basically prepared to meet God. Not quite ready for the face-to-face encounter, you understand, but not facing the experience with grave misgivings, either. Like this rose on which I am presently focused, whose petals will soon shatter, my days are also numbered. Come to think of it, they always have been. That sooner or later I too shall be the last rose of summer is a sobering reminder that I do not have the leisure of eternity to get done the things I need to do. Time has been God`s gift to me, as has been life itself. So, I am constrained to make the most of it, make things right wherever I can, get my house in order, burnish my relationships with God and others, fresh every morning-and smell the roses.
And this last rose of summer calls to mind the prospects and hopes that attend nature`s cycles ordained by God, ordered by the Almighty in his grand scheme of things. This rose will shatter in a week or so, the first killing frost will nip the tender stem, and the leaves will yellow and fall. The sturdy rose bush itself will stand, however, and the elaborate root system will stay firmly in the ground, alive and well under whatever ice and snow may come. Then on February 14 next year I will prune the bush rather severely.
A couple of weeks later new buds will swell, new growth will emerge, a tender stem will start pushing upward, then a tiny rose bud will develop at the end of the stem, in a few more days the bud will grow enough for the red color to be seen about to break through, and then one bright, sunny spring morning I will once again look out this window to see the first rose of a new season. Bright red, exquisitely formed, inordinately fragrant, proudly alone in my small rose garden, and a little bigger than it might reasonably be expected to be, as if to demonstrate to the world that, after all, as Robert Browning put it, "God`s in his heaven, all`s right with the world."
God willing.
