Poems Lyrical and Dramatic :: :: University of Virginia Library

Beyond dim Slumber's hazy slopes,
Beyond where through the pale far dawn
A path for sad Remembrance opes
To that deep threshold, poppy-strawn,
Where fading clouds of vanished years
Still blush with buried hopes and fears,
Two gardens, lit by brackish streams
And rained upon by living tears,
Lie bathed in shadowy golden gleams,—
The Garden of forgotten hopes,
The Garden of our dreams.

There dwells the faint mysterious smile
Which drew thine earliest sweet despair
To realms no after-loves defile,
To dreams no after-days can share;
The hand which thrilled thee long ago

With that long aching spirit-glow
Thou never more shalt feel on earth,
The lover's tears of holy woe,
The ring of painless childhood's mirth,
The hopes that death holds back awhile,
The dreams before thy birth.

There lie the thoughts a moment viewed,
That through the glory of thy sleep
Have swept in glittering multitude
Like flame of waves across the deep.
There shine the gleams the glimpses pale
Beyond the tides, between the veil
Over the vague hereafter furled,
The reddening stars of wrathful trail
Across thy youth's mad orbit hurled,
The vain compassions that bedewed
The sorrows of the world.

A place of fields, a place of flowers,
A place it is of hidden thorns,
Of sad long days and sweet short hours,
Pained loves and pleasurable scorns,
Of memories long that cling to grief
And lost delights of memory brief,

Of passionate tears and curses wild,
And many a broken lame belief,
And many a bitter smile we smiled,
An arid Spring with no bright showers,
An Autumn without child.

There all day long white lilies wave
And rich red roses bud and bloom,
But every root is in a grave,
And drops each petal on a tomb;
There wafts of heavy fragrance steep
The sickening soul with love or sleep,
But, breathing, all men surely die;
There they that straw and they that reap
Are made as one perpetually,
And they that loathe and they that crave,
And all that laugh and sigh.

Then pause not by their flowering groves
While youthful blood is free and red.
Not there the gay or thoughtless roves,
Not there may mirth and music wed,
But barren loves forsaken pine,
And world-sick bards their garlands twine

Of blossoms dripping poisoned streams,
But dear to them as opiate wine,—
Where death is not and life but seems,
The Garden of forgotten loves,
The Garden of our dreams.