# Tempted

Language: en  
Author: \-by Marita Horst  
Original issue: The Heartbeat of The Remnant, January/February 2010, Number 1  
Source pages: 13  
Read article: <https://remnant.truechristian.church/en/poetry/tempted/>
Original PDF: 2010\-01\-Remnant\.pdf
[The Heartbeat of The Remnant, January/February 2010](<https://remnant.truechristian.church/en/issues/heartbeat-remnant-2010-01/>)

![Cluster of roses](<https://remnant.truechristian.church/images/articles/05f07674-20dd-446e-aa36-5c7e43cef66d-1.jpg>)

Like the sweetest rose it came  
 In a swirling velvet frame;  
 All my mind could see was that—  
 Not all, for I saw Christ and stalled—  
 But this, it lured me, called  
 As dazzled there I sat\.

I scarcely knew what had come  
 When it was there, but from  
 Where it came I knew well;  
 In swelling symphony it sang,  
 Grabbed all my passions, rang  
 With lovely, longing swell\.

![Single rose with dark petals at its center](<https://remnant.truechristian.church/images/articles/05f07674-20dd-446e-aa36-5c7e43cef66d-2.jpg>)

Surrounded now, I reached and took  
 And held it—and the look,  
 The feel, the smell was sweet to me\.  
 But gone the scent beneath my nose\!  
 This in my hand is not a rose\!  
 A long, cruel thorn is all there be\.

A thorn whose blood will dry,  
 A mark whose tears will cease to cry …  
 But the scar, the memory  
 Of that velvet rose I grasped tight  
 Will linger on to haunt me: fight  
 Against the velvet roses calling thee\.