The original audience for "Go, Lovely Rose" could be a young woman who is not returning the speaker's affections.
One of the three figures of speech that this speaker uses includes the extended metaphor that runs throughout the poem, comparing the speaker's beloved to a rose. Both the beloved and the rose are "sweet and fair," and both will die before they know it because of " [h]ow small a part of time they share."
The poem also uses apostrophe (or direct address to an absent person or
inanimate object), as seen in the first line: "Go, lovely rose!" The speaker
wants the rose to relay a message to his beloved.
Finally, the poem employs imagery, such as when the speaker wants the rose
to tell the beloved that she should "not blush" to be desired. We can picture
the young woman blushing so that her cheeks become red like a rose.
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