Peter Hammill - Naming the Rose lyrics

He had worked on this for years since they know they'd be childless: to hybridise a thornless and deep-scented damask rose. She was always by his side in the lengthening shadows... this case is closed. Ena Harkness, Constance Spry, Emily Grey, Margaret Merrill, Zepherine Drouhin, Aimee Vibert and Blanche Moreau – all these spirits still survive in the act of the grower (in peace and compa**ion he's...) naming the rose, naming the rose in the memory of sweetness. Dedication to the call and he offers up the hope that love conquers all. It's not easy to explain how he felt at her pa**ing the very day on which the most perfect bloom was full-blown; tender cruelty that she'd never share in this moment, naming the rose. He takes her ashes to the seed-bed and works them in gently so that her soul will rise like sap in the plants as they grow and then whispering her name writes it out on the label, naming the rose, naming the rose for the sake of her sweetness. Naming the rose in the memory of sweetness.