Flower o' the thorn :: :: University of Virginia Library

And gives us halcyon heavens and blue and golden days,
That might be June's, except the shortening hours and haze.
The streets are all aflood with folk agog to find
The flittergold of Day, ere darkness end the game.
But I, back turning on the ways,
Where soul, as body, hardens,
Subdued to that wherein
They work, dirt, crowds and din,
To my old harbour from the heat,
The noise, the dust-clouds of the street,
The folk, direct my wandering feet,
—To Kensington's green Gardens.

The wide glades welcome me;
For him, on every hand, they build, with tree on tree,
Whose wont hath ever been
To worship in the green,
Their aisles of light and shade, cathedrals of the air.
Thanks to the mild, moist days, the boughs are not yet bare;
Though many an one hath donned the Autumn's shadow-sheen
And flaunts in red and gold and purple panoply.
A thin haze hovers everywhere,
A web of colours sober,
Mist-curtains for the bier
Woven of the waning year.
The birds all dumb are in the dells
And from the dying leaves there swells
A scent of spicery sad, that tells
The tidings of October.

Among the arching rows
The axe hath busy been; full many a gap there shows,
Where some old trunk must fall,
To save its neighbours tall,

Too closely set to thrive or in the soil strike deep.
Full many a hero hoar the hand of Death must reap,
Following the law of Life, that some must die for all,
As the rose springs from out the ashes of the rose.
Nay, yonder, farther as I peep,
Along the aisles sun-gilded,
Where the trees open out,
A round of sward about,
I see the patriarchs' corpses grey,
As 'twere against the burial-day,
With iron fenced around, by way
Of funeral pyres, up-builded.

But what is that a-sit
Upon the topmost pile, as if, from Heaven down-lit,
A piece of the sky's hue,
A cloud of clustering blue,
Upon the grey old logs had settled like a flower?
A perching peacock 'tis, that, in the halcyon hour,
Spreads out its shimmering tail, to drink the sunlight new,
And preens its sapphire plumes, with watchet eyes o'erwrit.
There, glittering in the golden shower,
A clump of careless colour,
Its body bright, inlaid
With many a mingling shade
Of blue, coerulean, sapphire, smalt,
Sea, watchet, indigo, cobalt,
It rears, all blent without default,
Offsetting brighter duller.

Upon the logs a-brood,
It shows as 'twere the soul and flower of the dead wood,
As if Death's after-day
Its brightness from decay

Had summoned up, to tell the tale in colour-speech
Of all the glories past, that dwelt in elm and beech.
An angel in bird-form upon the ruins grey
Of these in whose young boughs of yore the thrushes wooed,
The merles contended, each with each,
At telling April's story,
It seems, from realms above,
A sign and seal of love
Upon the forest-martyrs set,
So careless men may not forget
To pay their ruins hoar the debt
Of memory and glory.

Nay, what a mistress here
Of unconsidering art thou showest, Nature dear!
Did we essay to win
Conflicting colours kin,
Brothers and enemies, to blend in one delight,
We should but bring to pass a sorrow for the sight.
Sky-blue and sea-blue blent were in our hands a sin;
Sapphire and turquoise each from each would shrink in fear
Or form that worst of discords might,
A discord of the second.
But, with thy Goddess-hand,
From earth to Heaven outspanned,
Thou tak'st the hostile hues to thee
And mak'st a heavenly harmony
Of that which in our use would be
A deadly discord reckoned.

So ever, Mother mild,
That never yet forsook'st thine understanding child,
It is with thee: thou still
For goodness dost fulfil

That which for bale begun and mischief is of men.
The lily from the marsh, the iris from the fen
Thou draw'st for our delight; yea, at thy gracious will,
For him who loves thee, bid'st, in Sorrow's deserts wild,
Hope's blossoms bud and blow again
And from our destitution,
From the harsh clash of strife,
The jar of Death and Life,
With breath of breeze and voice of dove,
With flowers beneath and heavens above,
Draw'st, with the common chord of Love,
Th'eternal resolution.