Emily Brontë sets love and friendship side by side, using a wild rose and a holly tree to show the difference between brief passion and steady loyalty. The rose-briar blooms sweetly in spring and scents the summer air, but when winter arrives, nobody calls it fair. Love, she suggests, is dazzling yet fleeting. Friendship, like the dark holly, may seem unremarkable next to the rose’s vivid beauty, but it holds its green through every season. The speaker’s voice is gentle but firm, urging us to ‘scorn the silly rose-wreath’ and choose the holly’s lasting sheen. There’s a quiet, almost elegiac mood here—an acceptance that beauty fades and that what endures is the steady, constant thing. It’s not a rejection of love, exactly, but a hard-won preference for the garland that won’t wither when life turns cold.
Love and Friendship — Summary
Love is like the wild rose-briar, Friendship like the holly-tree -- The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms But which will bloom most contantly? The wild-rose briar is sweet in the spring, Its summer blossoms scent the air; Yet wait till winter comes again And who wil call the wild-briar fair? Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now And deck thee with the holly's sheen, That when December blights thy brow He may still leave thy garland green.