The sun arose and so did she.
The breezes blew,
and eagles flew
and circled to the sea.
There on her pillow by the bed
a note was pinned upon a rose,
a note she took and later read.
"My dear," it said,
"see how smoothly this stem grows,
how clean the line to flower flows,
how true to me this thornless rose."
"What can it mean?" she sadly asked,
"What obscure clue or hopeful task?
What wit or wisdom there contained?
And why's a barren flower chose
when countless healthy ones he grows,
yet sends me now this thornless rose?"
One summer day a letter came.
"Goodbye" it said and then his name.
"And so it ends," she thought and froze,
remembering the thornless rose.
The seasons passed without a word
till songs about his death were heard.
Her heart, long broken, had shielded pain
until she read the note again.
Without that yearning to fuel the grief,
she had no wound, just a belief.
He knew he was to die that day
and cleansed her sorrow clean away,
for lacking wounds,
pain seldom grows,
as seldom as the thornless rose.