My rose is often red and often pale
and often do I pray up to the sun
that it would gaze at her without its veil
and warm her shadows back till there were none.
For in her earth she droops her petaled head
and morning dew remains throughout the day
to drip as tears that wet her shady bed,
a poisoned soil, lost to daylight’s ray.
Yet still sustained, I see her, nobly so,
and note how pallor blends her petal’s hue,
how scarlet tinges fringe her folded view
accentented by the creamy earth below;
that so, when looking at the fields in full
I find in her more beauty than the whole.