Why do you stand there at the gate,
Out there where the roadway goes?
Is it me you watch under the rim of your hat,
Me, or the rose?

There you stand by your cart,
And you look at the rose, not me,
For I am very old.
But the bloom of the rose is the light of my eyes,
And the root of the rose my heart.

Here died he by the threshold,
(Piet, Piet, how young were we!)
But they drank his blood with their assegais,
And left the house so cold —
And desolate unto me....

This homestead and the land
Left desolate unto me,
But his blood broke out in the sand
In this rose that never dies;
This rose in the burning sand.

The dew on the leaves of the rose? —
They are tears that never dry,
The thorns on the stem of the rose? —
They are hate that waits that hand —
The hand that slew my man, —
God shall not pass it by!
Nothing shall hinder, nothing let!
God knows the road by which he goes,
And God shall not forget!

God shall remember yet
The tears that never dry,
And the hundred men to one
That knew the way to die....
I talk and I talk out here in the sun,
Where the dusty roadway goes,
With the stranger there with his cart,
Who stops to see the rose —
I, who have seen the assegais....
While the red rose burns with the light of my eyes,
And the rose-roots grope in my heart.

Why do you stand there at the gate,
Out there where the roadway goes?
Is it me you watch under the rim of your hat?
Not so, but the rose.