The poem plays with cliché to call attention to the absurdity of outdated romantic gestures. Using over-the-top, self-consciously "poetic" language like "scented dew" and "floweret"—and building the poem around the well-worn idea of the rose as a symbol of love—the speaker pokes fun at uninspired cultural ideas about romance and women.
The repeated phrase "one perfect rose" plays on the cliché of a "perfect" or "pure" kind of love being something as fresh and lovely as a rose. This image is so old and worn-out that it even appears in the most clichéd of all Valentine's rhymes: "Roses are red, / Violets are blue, / Sugar is sweet, / And so are you." It makes sense that the speaker of "One Perfect Rose" would make fun of her lover for using a similarly trite rose to impress her.
The speaker even mocks the message that roses supposedly send, saying:
I knew the language of the floweret;
"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."
The word "fragile" highlights the clichéd notion that romance is a delicate blossom—a perspective that comes along with the sexist assumption that women themselves are fragile and sentimental.
In the final stanza of the poem ("Why is it [...] perfect rose"), though, the speaker blatantly challenges the cliché surrounding roses and romance by suggesting that she'd rather receive "one perfect limousine" than "one perfect rose." This illustrates how useless a rose really is. It'd be much more exciting, the speaker implies, to receive something modern and unexpected—something like a limousine, that she could really have fun with. Instead of rehashing old clichés, the poem suggests, lovers would be better off leaving behind unimaginative traditions and expressing their affection in more authentic, genuinely interesting ways.