 | Denzil place |  |
Sometimes they skirted Geoffrey Denzil's park
(Their absent nearest neighbour, then abroad,
Unknown as yet to Constance, tho' Sir John
Had been his guardian when he was a boy,
Their fathers being kinsmen). From the wall
That fenced it round, the ivy-tresses hung,
And served to help young Roland when he climb'd
Follow'd by Constance, into Denzil park,
There would they wander, for the tangled shade
Unthinn'd for many years, possess'd a charm
For her young heart she scarce could understand,
The gnarlèd limbs of those neglected trees
Seem'd weirdly twisting into human shapes,
And nowhere did the ferns and mosses grow
In such luxuriance; the rooks, too, built
Whole cities, she could scarcely call them nests,
And Roland once had said, on seeing them,
He thought the weight of them must make the heads
Of the poor heavy-laden fir-trees ache—
They often waded ankle-deep in leaves
Scatter'd by many winters;—here the air
Seem'd heavy with the Past, from man to leaf,
But by and bye the tangled thicket ceased,
And evergreens, and winding gravel walks
(Untended now) led to the sloping lawn—
Quaint shapes of nymph and satyr guarded it,
And further on, a gate of filagree
Sided by Denzil dragons, open'd full
On the deserted terrace. Here and there
Forming the centre of a garden bed,
A yew-tree (pointed once, and duly trimm'd
As are the toy-trees of a Noah's Ark,)
Uprear'd its head, all ragged and unshorn,
And seem'd to show the garden's plan had been
Italian. With doors and windows barr'd,
Sometimes the trespassers would peep and mark
The silent, low, Elizabethan house
Behind the bowling-green; thro' screening boughs
They often watch'd its only sign of life—
The kitchen chimney's faint blue smoke, that curl'd
Over the cedars when the wind was east.
(Their absent nearest neighbour, then abroad,
Unknown as yet to Constance, tho' Sir John
Had been his guardian when he was a boy,
Their fathers being kinsmen). From the wall
That fenced it round, the ivy-tresses hung,
And served to help young Roland when he climb'd
16
There would they wander, for the tangled shade
Unthinn'd for many years, possess'd a charm
For her young heart she scarce could understand,
The gnarlèd limbs of those neglected trees
Seem'd weirdly twisting into human shapes,
And nowhere did the ferns and mosses grow
In such luxuriance; the rooks, too, built
Whole cities, she could scarcely call them nests,
And Roland once had said, on seeing them,
He thought the weight of them must make the heads
Of the poor heavy-laden fir-trees ache—
They often waded ankle-deep in leaves
Scatter'd by many winters;—here the air
Seem'd heavy with the Past, from man to leaf,
But by and bye the tangled thicket ceased,
And evergreens, and winding gravel walks
(Untended now) led to the sloping lawn—
Quaint shapes of nymph and satyr guarded it,
And further on, a gate of filagree
Sided by Denzil dragons, open'd full
On the deserted terrace. Here and there
Forming the centre of a garden bed,
A yew-tree (pointed once, and duly trimm'd
17
Uprear'd its head, all ragged and unshorn,
And seem'd to show the garden's plan had been
Italian. With doors and windows barr'd,
Sometimes the trespassers would peep and mark
The silent, low, Elizabethan house
Behind the bowling-green; thro' screening boughs
They often watch'd its only sign of life—
The kitchen chimney's faint blue smoke, that curl'd
Over the cedars when the wind was east.
| Denzil place | |