I See His Blood Upon The Rose: Poem, Meaning And Story

“I See His Blood Upon the Rose” is a 12-line poem by Joseph Mary Plunkett, one of the seven signatories of the 1916 Proclamation. It sees Christ’s Passion everywhere in nature: his blood in the rose, his cross in every tree. It was in print by 1911, five years before the Rising, so it began as a religious poem.

Well, I think this week’s top Irish poem is the shortest one yet. But don’t be fooled by the shortness of this poem.

Twelve lines, three short verses. It has found its way into choir books and Good Friday services.

This poem comes in at number 22 on the top 100 Irish poems list.

Below is the full text, as it appears in the original books. Then what it means, when it was written, and the man who wrote it. His story includes a wedding in a prison chapel, by candlelight.

Jump to:

The poem in full
What it means, verse by verse
When it was written
Who was Joseph Mary Plunkett?
Joseph Plunkett and Grace Gifford
Why it is read at Easter
Musical settings and readings
The other poets of 1916
FAQ
More Irish poems

I See His Blood Upon the Rose: the poem in full

A single red rose, the image at the heart of Plunkett’s poem

I See His Blood Upon the Rose
by Joseph Mary Plunkett

I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.

I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice—and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.

All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.

This text follows the 1911 first edition and the 1916 collected Poems. In both, “his” is lower case inside the poem. Many websites capitalise it throughout, but Plunkett didn’t.

It’s also often misquoted as “I see the blood upon a rose”. It’s “his blood” and “the rose”.

What “I See His Blood Upon the Rose” means, verse by verse

The “he” of the poem is Christ. Plunkett never names him, and he doesn’t need to.

The poet sees Christ everywhere in nature. He sees the details of the crucifixion.

Line	In plain English
Blood upon the rose	The red of the flower is the blood of the Passion.
Glory of his eyes	The stars are his eyes, shining down.
Body amid eternal snows	Mountain snow is his body, pure white.
Tears fall from the skies	Rain is his tears. Even the weather grieves.
Thunder and birdsong	Thunder is his loud voice, birdsong his gentle one.
Rocks are his written words	The rocks are scripture, carved by God.
Pathways by his feet are worn	Every road you walk, he walked first.
Crown of thorns, every thorn	Every thorn bush shares in his suffering.
His cross is every tree	Every tree stands for the wood of the cross.

Verse one lays the words of Good Friday (blood, body, tears) over the whole of creation. Verse two is about hearing, and the rocks become words God carved himself.

Verse three gets heavier as it goes: feet, heart, crown of thorns, cross. Each verse ends on a short line, and this last one lands like a full stop.

Where the idea comes from

Seeing God in creation is an old Christian idea, and Plunkett knew the writers behind it.

His sister Geraldine wrote the foreword to his collected poems in 1916. She named his constant books as St John of the Cross, St Teresa, St Francis and John Tauler. She wrote that “their mark on his poetry is very plain.”

When was it written? Not in 1916

Plenty of websites get this wrong. They tie the poem to the Rising, or even to Plunkett’s last night in prison.

In fact it was in print by 1911, five years earlier. It appeared in his first book, The Circle and the Sword, published by Maunsel in Dublin.

The book was dedicated to Thomas MacDonagh, his friend and Irish teacher. According to Geraldine, Plunkett was in Algiers when it came out. MacDonagh chose the poems and saw the book through the press.

Geraldine said he wanted only a few poems from that book counted as his mature work. This was one of them. It was reprinted in his collected Poems after his death in 1916.

So the poem was written by a sick young man of 23 or younger, not a soldier facing a firing squad. Knowing what came later, though, it’s hard to read it the same way.

Who was Joseph Mary Plunkett?

Joseph Mary Plunkett was born in Dublin on 21 November 1887. He was the eldest son of Count George Noble Plunkett, who later became director of the National Museum.

He was sick from early childhood with glandular tuberculosis. He also had frequent bouts of pleurisy and pneumonia, and spent long stretches in bed. All that bed rest made him a huge reader.

He went to Belvedere in Dublin and to Stonyhurst in Lancashire. Between 1910 and 1912 he spent time in Italy, Algeria and Egypt.

Poet, editor, revolutionary

1913: he became editor of the Irish Review and turned it towards politics.
November 1913: he was at the first meeting of the Irish Volunteers and sat on its provisional committee.
1914: he set up the Irish Theatre in Hardwicke Street with MacDonagh and Edward Martyn.
1915: by now in the IRB, he went to Germany to help Roger Casement look for arms. That May he joined the IRB’s Military Council.

He was the chief military planner of the Rising. He was also the youngest of the seven men who signed the Proclamation.

In early April 1916 he had major surgery on his neck. He was still in the GPO all through Easter week, wrapped in bandages.

After a court martial, he was shot early on the morning of 4 May 1916. He was 28. Edward Daly, Michael O’Hanrahan and Willie Pearse were executed the same morning.

In the Irish Times in 2016, his grand-niece Honor Ó Brolcháin called this poem “unquestionably his most celebrated poem”.

Joseph Plunkett and Grace Gifford

Grace Gifford was an artist and cartoonist from Rathmines who had studied under William Orpen. She was raised a Protestant and became a Catholic. Her sister Muriel was married to Thomas MacDonagh.

On the evening of 3 May 1916, hours before his execution, she and Joseph were married in the chapel of Kilmainham Gaol.

The OPW says Fr Eugene McCarthy of St James’s Parish conducted the ceremony by candlelight. Ó Brolcháin adds that the gas had been cut off.

Soldiers with fixed bayonets stood by. His handcuffs were taken off only for the vows. They were then separated.

Later that night, at about 2am, Grace was brought back to see him for ten minutes. Guards were present the whole time. As she later told the Bureau of Military History: “I was never left alone with him, even after the marriage ceremony.”

Seven years later, in 1923, Grace was held in Kilmainham herself.

See the wedding relics at Kilmainham

If you’re in Dublin, the chalice, ciborium and paten used at the wedding are on display at Kilmainham Gaol Museum.

They are on loan from St James’s Parish and the Archdiocese of Dublin, and sit in the “Last Words” section, the OPW announced in September 2026.

The song “Grace”

The ballad “Grace” is about the wedding, not the poem.

RTÉ Archives says brothers Frank and Seán O’Meara wrote it in 1985. Jim McCann sang it with the Dubliners on RTÉ that December. Rod Stewart later recorded it too.

Why it is read at Easter

Most of the images in the poem point to Good Friday. Blood, thorns, a crown, a cross.

That makes it a natural fit for Lent and Holy Week. Church choirs sing settings of it in that season, and it is sometimes read at Good Friday services.

It also turns up around 1916 commemorations, which fall at Easter too. The poem predates the Rising, but the timing makes the link hard to avoid.

Musical settings and readings

Here are the versions I know of:

OCP, the American church music publisher, lists a choral setting for SATB choir and keyboard in its choral series.
LibriVox volunteers recorded 12 free readings in March 2008. You can hear them on archive.org.

Other settings exist, but I couldn’t confirm them well enough to list here.

The other poets of 1916

Three signatories were poets. A fourth, Francis Ledwidge, makes a sharp contrast.

Poet	Life	Worth reading
Patrick Pearse	Born 1879, founded St Enda’s school in 1908, executed 3 May 1916	“The Mother” and “The Fool”
Thomas MacDonagh	Born 1878 in Cloughjordan, commanded at Jacob’s factory, executed 3 May 1916	Through the Ivory Gate (1902), Lyrical Poems (1913)
Joseph Mary Plunkett	Born 1887, executed 4 May 1916	The Circle and the Sword (1911), Poems (1916)
Francis Ledwidge	Served in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, killed in Flanders in the summer of 1917	His elegy for MacDonagh

Ledwidge was serving in the British army when his friend MacDonagh was shot. His elegy opens “He shall not hear the bittern cry”. Just over a year later, Ledwidge was dead too.

For more of these writers, see my list of the 10 best Irish poets.