The opening out of a tight, compressed bud into a full, wide, blooming rose can readily be imagined as the rosebud's opening its petal-arms in its delighted eagerness to embrace the ravishing beloved. In a related idiom, the 'narrow' [] heart is sad or displeased (as in 31,2 ), and its widening or opening is a mark of pleasure. But in the case of the short-lived bud and even shorter-lived rose, such an embrace of welcome and delight can hardly fail to be also an embrace of farewell or leave-taking. On the rich possibilities of the 'embrace of leave-taking', see 57,6 . For an embrace is 'opened' to enfold the embraced one-- and then afterwards it is, however reluctantly, 'opened' or 'loosened' once again to release the embraced one. The 'opening' of the embrace of leave-taking is thus inherently ambiguous, and can hardly help but feel suffused with grief and loss. Moreover, there's the cleverly prominent placement of , 'to be a rose', which also idiomatically means 'to be extinguished', as in the case of a candle or lamp put out by a (rosebud-shaped) snuffer (see the definition above). The burning red radiance of the rose is often metaphorically identified as fire (for an example, see 75,1 , and the bud is shaped like the flame of a candle. Thus the idea that the bud's being 'extinguished' causes, or 'is', the opening or loosening of an embrace of the beloved, has a perfect romantic melancholy. This 'extinguishing' of the rosebud, whether through its morphing into a (short-lived) rose or through some more mystical attainment of oblivion, can hardly help but provide an enjoyably autumnal shiver. graphics/rose.jpg