Did ever blossom in a field of tears,
So beautiful a rose? Beset by fears,
And hounded by a past that plucked its grace,
And scattered petals broadcast like red lace,
Yet even as the sunlight flings a beam
O'er the horizon, peeping as to seem
A small thin, so the glory thorned is hid,
The fairest eye is shuttered by its lid.

And I, a wanderer and warrior bold,
Or so I deem myself, in all the tales I've told,
Yet mortal kind is just to mortal kin,
And carnal flesh leads high and low in sin.
So I, forlorn and bent with many cares,
Was weeping, wending way there unawares,
As ice cold-crisped beneath my feet,
And flames of torment throbbed with my heartbeat.

Yet suddenly, my eye espied the rose,
And through the veil of tears its smile it shows:
The fires are stilled. The gnawing pain is gone.
The ice that chilled my step is thawing as though dawn
Had come to kiss this bleak, forsaken place.
I knelt and took the rose in my embrace,
And felt the priceless petals in my arms,
And felt the thorns withdraw their sharp alarms.

My wonder grew, as all the field of tears,
So pale and wan with grieving of the years,
Was lit with splendour, as though life had come
To frozen things, that all their life were numb.
As dumb I stood, my tongue in marvel cleaved
Unto my mouth, to see this, once bereaved,
Now resurrected, land beging to bloom,
And hope arose where had been naught but doom.

My gaze again turned to the lovely rose,
And in amaze I asked whither it goes,
To learn this sweet enchantment that transforms
To peaceful reverie the raging storms.
It smiled at me. I felt a silent thrill
Of comfort and of love begin to fill
My aching heart, as soft its voice caressed my ears,
"The fire and ice Rose rules the field of tears."

-The Steel-

Penned by my hand on the 22nd of Naturalis, in the year 419 AD.