Exiles Poetry: "Subridet Sub Rosa"

The Title is Latin for "She secretly smiles," but literally translated the phrase means "Beneath the Rose, She Laughs Under".

Sep 05, 2023

The Lost Country

Fall 2012 • Vol. 1, No. 1

issn 2326-5310 (online)

This work was published in the Fall 2012 issue of The Lost Country. You may purchase a physical copy of this issue from The Exiles or, if you prefer, from Amazon.

“Subridet Sub Rosa”

By Tyler Morrison

Per grazia fa noi grazia che disvele
A lui la bocca tua, sì che discerna
La seconda bellezza che tu cele.¹

Her lips are fixed with permanence
In a pensive non-expression,
Simply curved and pinkish plain.
She buries here her prized possession,
A secret smile that Horus2 keeps,
The hidden cove, a lover’s trove
Untouched by the searching, yearning glance
Of strangers who would a god profane.

If verses could but part the petals,
What winsome wealth of mirth would show;
How lily-white the sudden flash
That breaks beneath the opened rose!

“Look here, my lady! I call to thee.
Oh, end thy silence! Laugh for me.”

But I have not a Dante’s power3
To peel away Harpocrates.4
Unless the young god’s unseen finger
Be lifted by a flimsy rhyme,
Then her mouth shall stay a virgin flower,
And I before this moonlit balcony
Will pine lightheaded and wait her favor,
Writing odes to buy love time.

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Tyler Morrison, in 2012, became the last graduate of the College of Saint Thomas More. In addition to his poetry, he is currently writing his first novel and play.

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Although the Exiles live in different parts of the world, and walk various paths of life, they all shared the general conviction that literature is a worth-while endeavor which unifies us as a community. And it is in such a community that literature is most ably produced. Read More

The members of The Exiles shared the conviction that literature is one of the modes of knowledge through which truth becomes accessible to man. The contemplation of a literary work of art is a vision of that deeper reality which we mean by the term Truth. Read More

The Exiles were formally established in June 2012 as a literary club in the tradition of the Inklings of Oxford and the Fugitives of Vanderbilt University. They met regularly to share and critique each other’s writing and to discuss literary and aesthetic theory in general. Read More

Copyright © Tyler Morrison, The Exiles, and Tower Press Books.

A reference to Beatrice’s beatific smile that she hides like a shining treasure.

Dante’s Purgatorio: Canto 31, Lines 133-138 (English verse translation courtesy of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published 1867.)

“Volgi, Beatrice, volgi li occhi santi,”
 era la sua canzone, “al tuo fedele
 che, per vederti, ha mossi passi tanti!

"Per grazia fa noi grazia che disvele
 a lui la bocca tua, sì che discerna
 la seconda bellezza che tu cele.”

"Turn, Beatrice, O turn thy holy eyes,"
  Such was their song, "unto thy faithful one,
  Who has to see thee ta'en so many steps."

"In grace do us the grace that thou unveil
  Thy face to him, so that he may discern
  The second beauty which thou dost conceal."

Egyptian deity, the patron of silence and secrets, depicted at times as a youth with one finger pressed over his lips to signal, “shh; hush.”

See footnote 1.

Greek name for Horus. See footnote 2.

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