Pour these roses next to the wine

Pour these roses next to the wine,

Next to this fine wine pour these roses,

And drink one to another, that

Those sad things we keep in our hearts

May meet in drinking some kind of end.

The fair rose of spring,

Aubert, admonishes men

To spend their time joyously

And, while we're young,

To frolic away the flower of our years.

And just as her petals fall,

Faded in a morning,

So our age is blighted:

Alas, in less than a day

A man's springtime perishes.

Didn't you see Brinon yesterday

Chattering and making good cheer,

Who, alas, is nothing today but

A little powder in a beer

Which has nothing of him but his name?

None can avoid his death,

Charon closes his net on us all,

Kings and paupers fall down below;

But - time is passing,

O Rose, and I am not singing of you!

The Rose is the most distinguished of crimsons,

The Rose is of flowers most beautiful,

And above all others takes the prize:

That's why I call it

The violet of Cypris.

The Rose is the scent of love

The Rose is the plaything of the Graces,

The Rose makes all around it fade,

In the morning, with tiny pearls

She borrows from the dawn.

The Rose is the perfume of the gods,

The Rose is the symbol of virgins,

Who love far more to enrich

Their breast with fresh roses

Than with gold however precious.

Is there anything beautiful without her?

The Rose enhances all things,

Venus has skin like roses,

And Dawn is rosy-fingered8

And the morning Sun is rose-pink.

The nymphs have rosy breasts,

Arms, bodies, legs;

Hebe has a rosy hand,

And the Graces, though fair-skinned,

Have all-rosy brows.

Would that mine was so crowned,

That would be for me a laurel of victory;

Up then, call the twice-born,

The good father, and let's make him drink,

Encircled by these roses.

Bacchus, enamoured of the beauty

Of roses with their crimson petals,

Has never been without them

When in shirt-sleeves he drinks

Beneath the arbour in the hottest days of summer.