"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on."One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you — the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing.
Because she is my rose."
Explanation:
`This is Friendship` by Mary Carolyn Davies.
Misattributed to Roy Croft
I could never forget you, Meggie, not as long as I live. And for my punishment I’m going to live a long, long time.
I wonder why you tug so at my nonexistent heart?
"I ought not to have listened to her," he confided to me one day.
"One never ought to listen to the flowers.
One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance.
Mine perfumed all my planet.
But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace.
This tale of claws, which disturbed me so much, should only have filled my heart with tenderness and pity."
And he continued his confidences:
"The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything!
I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words.
She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me.
I ought never to have run away from her...
I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems.
Flowers are so inconsistent!
But I was too young to know how to love her …"
— I love him.
— That's nonsense. Have you been in love before?
— There, you see. Then you can't know if you love him.
— We... danced.
— That doesn't mean anything.
— It does, too. We danced with one another. I know that I love him, because... because I know. It's right here. Inside of me. And you... You don't know have a clue about life. Not a clue. Because I have a boyfriend and you don't. You... old cow. We danced. We bought bus tickets. And we ate ice cream. And we shot for flowers. We slept in the same bed. We gazed at the moon. And I heard his heart beat.
