Rosae Mundi is my Valentine!

Desirability: Full bottle

Source: pinterest.com

A living rose.

A decant of Rosae Mundi and some others from the Profumum Roma line came just in time for me to celebrate Valentine's day my way- perfumed, with a good book and Serge purring at my feet. 

Rosae Mundi. Rose of the world. For a detailed and interesting write-up on the history of this phrase, read here. 

I don't know if Rosae Mundi is the Rose of the world but it definitely smells like the Rose of the earth or rather Rose and the Earth for that is what I smell in equal parts. Roses and earth-dirt, plants, animals, basically all that lives and breathes. The roses are the first to be noticed, huge blooms of perfumed roses that are a little powdery, a little tartly green and a little sweet. Don't write off the perfume as just another rose soliflore, that's just the beginning. 

Rosae Mundi moves out from behind the white picket fences into the real world and gets gritty. Dry, dusty and the smell of the earth after the rain has passed and under the tropical sun, steam practically rises from the cooled ground. That smell. Not just one smell but a smell that is complex and made up of the scent of many others, the watered soil, the plants-their roots, leaves and flowers, the soaring trees above, maybe even the worms and caterpillars. The roses are still blooming but the earth and its living things take the centre stage in this later part of Rosae Mundi. The scent stays this way for the rest of its long lifetime, it is there until you scrub it off with a good amount of soap and arm power. 

Source: pinterest.com

THE ROSE OF THE WORLD

by: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,

Mournful that no new wonder may betide,

Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,

And Usna's children died.

 

We and the labouring world are passing by:

Amid men's souls, that waver and give place

Like the pale waters in their wintry race,

Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,

Lives on this lonely face.

 

Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:

Before you were, or any hearts to beat,

Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;

He made the world to be a grassy road

Before her wandering feet.

Source: mrt.com.mk