Midsummer Rose

[smokingboot]

Fear not the fate of  the midsummer rose.
She wound herself around the standing stones,
and grew much taller, though the winter came
to freeze the earthen pools that fed her roots.
She sang a nectar song exceeding bright
and called the fine musicians of the sun
who always answer; here the riddle is!
The cuts within her leaves are little crescents,
moon shaped and telling of such tiny shadows
as men call elves, and these, shone through like lamps,
will show you to a fair and pleasant realm
provided you do wish it very true,
nor ever pluck her petals for brute gain.
For if held by a miscreant, who loves
dull mastery or boorish coin-in-hand,
then rose will spike him, hands and feet and all,
and send him, thorn enmeshed, to gaunt Weyland
who drags him back to the wight-haunted forge
where he will wear lead horse-shoes for the hunt,
pursuing lost souls all  throughout the night,
till, 'spite beseeching ,grim hounds fall on him.
But those whose gentle ways will scarcely move
the musings of the noonday honeybee,
who watch the light of Sirius outline
with flickering sparks the hare that rides the hill,
why these,treading so soft by old brock's sett
to watch the geese fly eastward beyond dreams
will find the secret of Midsummer Rose,
Old as the earth and more than all she seems