Inside: Flower With Thorns Poems.
All that glitters is not gold, just like not every beautiful flower you should grab. While yes, every flower is stunningly beautiful and unique from the rest, there’s also a powerful and hidden message along with the fact that so many flowers also come with thorns on the stems. If you’ve ever reached your hand in a rose bush to pull a rose for your mom or your special someone, you know what I’m talking about: that shock that something so beautiful could be so painful.
I’ll never forget one Valentine’s Day when I was young, my father came home with four rose bushes with different colored roses. One for my mother, as well as each of my sisters.
We planted these in our garden in our backyard and we were able to watch them grow and have our very own rose bushes from our dad– the gift that kept on giving for years. But this was my first lesson in pretty flowers that have thorns. Our parents had to give us so many warnings about reaching into the rose bush, that it became clear that they weren’t to be touched.
There’s a lot that we can take from this concept, and many already have and written it into poetry. These poems are so beautiful with deeper meanings.
While flowers are already a pretty common theme in poems, these all have a little bit of a different message behind it as well. So as you read about flowers, and the warnings they come with, read them also with the lens that these are warnings about life and people too. Some of the hardest lessons to learn are the ones about the people that appear to have good intentions and have secret motives underneath.
Dig into these flower with thorns poems.
Why Do Flowers Have Thorns
Plants are generally so soft, so forgiving, and so naturally welcoming to the touch, so it’s so shocking and random when you come across the ones with thorns… Not so welcoming to the touch. And since it’s not all flowers, I’ve always wondered why there are some that do and some that don’t have thorns on them. It’s a wondrous observation in nature and I just had to dig into it! It translates really well to these poems too and what their deeper meaning is to life.
Flowers that have thorns are flowers that have their own natural line of defense. While yes, they are defending themselves from the humans that pick the flowers, ultimately, they’re really defending themselves from the herbivores– the creatures that eat only plants. The thorns are meant to deter them from being eaten. The circle of life is crazy.
Roses naturally had to adapt with a defense since they are such a stunning and attention grabbing flower with a sweet smell, herbivores tend to gravitate towards them.
This changed my perspective on people that could be described as “a flower with thorns,” and helped me see that they are less of an offensive tactic to hurt others, but rather a defense mechanism to keep from getting hurt. As I read these flower with thorn poems, it really changed my perspective and helped me to see the topic differently, and in a new light!
Thorny Poetry
1. Every Rose Has A Thorn
The beauty of a Rose, its pure innocence,
The glee it brings when it’s greatness is gifted.
The heart of the beholder filled with wonder,
The senses are taken and one by one are lifted.
The eyes compare this single and individual flower,
To other types, different kinds and breeds.
By far it exceeds its expectations, its presence causes delight,
By comparison other flowers are weeds.
The nostrils take in this pleasing aroma,
The smell of perfection oozes even from its very name.
The inhaled pollen gently nests inside the smeller;
The Rose and the lover become indistinguishably the same.
But alas, perfection, beauty, love, all only mask what is hidden below, A secret that must remain.
The reality of the Rose shows a sorrowful being,
Saddened by its curse, the potential to cause great pain.
The happiness and the joy, the eternal unquestioning love,
The Rose can turn all this to scorn.
The beautiful creation, the sad and scared soul,
Only too aware of the truth; Every Rose has a Thorn.
2. Of Roses And Thorns
A certain man planted a rose and watered it faithfully.
Before it blossomed, he examined it.
He saw a bud that would soon blossom.
He also saw the thorns, and he thought,
‘How can any beautiful flower come from a plant,
burdened with so many sharp thorns? ‘
Saddened by this thought, he neglected to water the rose,
and before it was ready to bloom, it died.
So it is with many people…
Within every soul… there is a Rose.
The ‘G-d-like’ qualities planted in us at birth,
growing amidst the thorns of our faults
Many of us look at ourselves and see only the thorns, the defects.
We despair, thinking nothing good can possibly come from us.
We neglect to water the good within us,
and eventually it dies.
We never realize our potential.
Some don’t see the rose within themselves…
It takes someone else to show it to them.
One of the greatest gifts a person can possess…
is to be able to reach past the thorns and find the rose within others.
This is the truest, most innocent, and gracious characteristic of love –
to know another person,
including their faults, recognize the nobility in their soul,
and yet still help another to realize they can overcome their faults.
If we show them the rose, they will conquer the thorns.
Only then will they blossom,
and most likely, blooming thirty, sixty, a hundred-fold,
as it is given to them.
Our duty in this world is to help others,
by showing them their roses and not their thorns.
It is then that we achieve the love we should feel for each other.
Only then can we bloom in our own garden.
3. Flower and Thorn
AT Shiraz, in a sultan’s garden, stood
A tree whereon a curious apple grew,
One side like honey, and one side like rue.
Thus sweet and bitter is the life of man,
The sultan said, for thus together grow
Bitter and sweet, but wherefore none may know.
Herewith together you have flower and thorn,
Both rose and brier, for thus together grow
Bitter and sweet, but wherefore none may know.
Flower With Thorn Poems
4. Cruel Words and Rose Thorns
A spiky rose thorn
Pierces skin,
Drawing blood
From deep within.
Cruel words can do
The very same,
Causing wounds
That will remain.
5. Skin Deep
A rose so pretty
but beware its thorny stem
disguised as beauty.
6. Rose Thorns
Why do roses need their thorns?
Some things are little known.
But thorns of roses
spring and seize the surface
of fey airs
before the roses come.
I’ve seen thorns huddle in a harmony alone,
hunkered down on green, wiry canes,
smoothed blades of whipping rose stalks,
and curl their polished tridents
to night’s call.
They are like stars
digging into firmament
with such desire,
you don’t quite get it,
and so healthy that
they almost have to wound,
or like bodies that can’t be argued,
borrowed, tamed.
The touch of a thorn
is a wry, deep telling
of the senses not to bloom
without a wish to,
without belief in pain
to hold us true.
7. Roses Only
You do not seem to realise that beauty is a liability rather than
an asset—that in view of the fact that spirit creates form we are justified in supposing
that you must have brains. For you, a symbol of the unit, stiff and sharp,
conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority and liking for everything
self-dependent, anything an
ambitious civilisation might produce: for you, unaided to attempt through sheer
reserve, to confute presumptions resulting from observation, is idle. You cannot make us
think you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you are brilliant, it
is not because your petals are the without-which-nothing of pre-eminence. You would look, minus
thorns—like a what-is-this, a mere
peculiarity. They are not proof against a worm, the elements, or mildew
but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliance without co-ordination? Guarding the
infinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience to
the remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be remembered too violently,
your thorns are the best part of you.
Poetry, while we love when it’s positive, uplifting, encouraging, and reminds us of all of the beautiful parts of life, but when something like art is meant to help you heal, feel, and process, sometimes you get poetry in this style. The kind that is talking about what hurts and is talking about the tougher parts of life. And that’s okay, the internet and our poetry journals are safe places to do that, so that’s exactly what these are for.
And us, as consumers, readers, and poets ourselves, can read along and process with these authors. We might be feeling the exact same thing they are, having gone through something similar. Or not even having gone through a similar situation but one that evokes the same sort of feelings of confusion and confliction.
As women, it’s easy to laugh about “beauty is pain,” and that can be true on so many fronts, including beautiful people being unassuming and shockingly different than you would think.
Life generally has a way of shocking and surprising us, and not necessarily always in bad ways either. So as you read these poems about flowers with thorns, I hope you can process the shock and the switch up well.
If you’re ready for some simply beautiful flower poems without the thorns, here are 21 for you! We can learn so much from flowers with thorns and find the beauty of life in them, so read these poems to jumpstart your day in a positive way.
