Gwendol Bowling writes:

Taking the whole stanza as a whole:

Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless head on nameless walls,
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget.

(Portraits refer to real people)

Like the strangers that you've met,
The ragged men in the ragged clothes,

(Within Vincent's body of work, I should think this refers to the images of the "Orphan Men"...you have dealt with this topic quite well, I think...old forgotten war veterans, which war? Nonetheless, you have shown them to be real people...)

The silver thorn of bloody rose,

(referring to the fact that these silver haired elderly orphan men, had been the "silver" in their younger days, the instruments used in the -- war -- bloody rose)

Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.

(They saw the crushed and broken when they were younger men on the battlefields, and now as old men, penniless, homeless, forgotten, their fate seems much the same)

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