Perhaps oddly, my first thought was not of blood-red roses, but of Moses, way down in Egypt-land, who also was commanded to "Go down."

But back to the blood-red roses thing...I sing a chanty (cribbed from The Golden Ring) whose refrains are "Come down, come down ye roses" and "Come down, ye bunch of roses." So they don't always go, sometimes they come. And long ago in my folk education, I think I remember being advised that the roses were supposed to be the blood of the whale, "blooming" in the water?