How we cite our quotes: line
Quote #1
a wet rose
single on a stem – (lines 6-7)
Even the perfect rose seems to be isolated from the other flowers. Hmm. It's almost as if this is a metaphor for women, who often felt isolated in a rigidly-structured patriarchal society during H.D.'s day.
Quote #2
Rose, harsh rose,
marred and with stint of petals, (lines 1-2)
The first line of this poem is ambiguous: our speaker could be addressing the rose as a genus (so "rose" = all roses everywhere). We soon learn, though, that she's addressing a specific rose, one that doesn't seem to fit into all of the definitions of roses we've learned over the years.