In the Victorian language of flowers, eglantine has two meanings: “poetry” and “I wound to heal.” At a glance, the two meanings have nothing to do with one another, except that the latter is a paradox, a rhetorical device frequently used in poetry. The poetry of St. John of the Cross particularly employs this figure of speech, but he does so with the intention of demonstrating a particular theological reality. For St. John, the most perfect, divine love is that love which wounds to heal.
