Summer is full of nature, and it’s the time we usually get out into it, and let our senses partake of the beauty, inhale smells, and feel warm breezes on our skin. Then there is the plucked flowers perspective. Death is imminent, but the rose lives on as an unworldly comfort to us still in nature. Here is the translation of the Berlioz’s “La Spectre de la Rose” from Nuits d’ete. And following the translation, the link to the song performed by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. She is the rose whose art visits me at night, and whose love and I can still feel in her voice.

Open your closed eyelid
Which is gently brushed by a virginal dream!
I am the ghost of the rose
That you wore last night at the ball.
You took me when I was still sprinkled with pearls
Of silvery tears from the watering-can,
And, among the sparkling festivities,
You carried me the entire night.

O you, who caused my death:
Without the power to chase it away,
You will be visited every night by my ghost,
Which will dance at your bedside.
But fear nothing; I demand
Neither Mass nor De Profundis;
This mild perfume is my soul,
And I’ve come from Paradise.

My destiny is worthy of envy;
And to have a fate so fine,
More than one would give his life
For on your breast I have my tomb,
And on the alabaster where I rest,
A poet with a kiss
Wrote: “Here lies a rose,
Of which all kings may be jealous.”