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Blue Roses

[words Rudyard Kipling, music Peter Bellamy; notes on Blue Roses at the Kipling Society]

Blue Roses is a poem from Rudyard Kipling’s book Light That Failed Memoirs and was collected in his Songs From Books (Macmillan, 1914). Peter Bellamy sang it accompanied by Chris Birch on guitar on his fourth album of songs set to Kipling’s poems, Keep on Kipling.

Lyrics

Blue Roses

Roses red and roses white
Plucked I for my love’s delight.
She would none of all my posies—
Bade me gather her blue roses.

Half the world I wandered through,
Seeking where such flowers grew;
Half the world unto my quest
Answered me with laugh and jest.

Home I came at wintertide,
But my silly love had died,
Seeking with her latest breath
Roses from the arms of Death.

It may be beyond the grave
She shall find what she would have.
Mine was but an idle quest—
Roses white and red are best!