Something touching about the ‘half-blown’, that moment in a rose’s beauty when it is heavy with the weight of its own blooming. Too early here to see any roses in the garden – instead we have glossy burnished copper-burgundy leaves unfurling thickly around the pruned branches.
‘He gathered a half-blown rose, the first on the bush, and offered it to me.’
Source: Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (London: Bounty Books, 2012 (1847)), p. 280
