The Collected Poems of Philip Bourke Marston

In my garden it is night-time,
But a still time and a bright time;
For the moon rains down her splendor,
And my garden feels the wonder
Of the spell which it lies under
In that light so soft and tender.

While the moon her watch is keeping,
All the blossoms here are sleeping,
And the roses sigh for dreaming
Of the bees that love to love them
When the warm sun shines above them
And the butterflies pass gleaming.

Could one follow roses' fancies,
When the night the garden trances,
Oh, what fair things we should chance on!
For to lilies and to roses,
As to us, soft sleep discloses
What the waking may not glance on.

Hark, now, how across the moonlight,
Through the warmness of the June night,
From the tall trees' listening branches
Comes the sound, sustained and holy,
Of the passionate melancholy,
Of a wound which singing stanches.

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Oh, the ecstasy of sorrow
Which the music seems to borrow
From the thought of some past lover
Who loved vainly all his lifetime,
Till death ended peace and strife-time,
And the darkness clothed him over!

Oh, the passionate, sweet singing,
Aching, gushing, throbbing, ringing,
Dying in divine, soft closes,
Recommencing, waxing stronger,
Sweet notes, ever sweeter, longer,
Till the singing wakes the roses!

Quoth the roses to the singer:
“Oh, thou dearest music-bringer,
Now our sleep so sweetly endeth,
Tell us why thy song so sad seems,
When the air is full of glad dreams,
And the bright moon o'er us bendeth.”

Sang the singer to the roses:
“Love for you my song discloses;
Hence the note of grief I borrow.”
Quoth the roses, “Love means pleasure.”
Quoth the singer, “Love's best measure
Is its pure attendant sorrow.”

FLOWER FAIRIES.

Flower fairies — have you found them,
When the summer's dusk is falling,
With the glow-worms watching round them;
Have you heard them softly calling?

358

Silent stand they through the noonlight,
In their flower shapes, fair and quiet;
But they hie them forth by moonlight,
Ready then to sing and riot.

I have heard them; I have seen them,—
Light from their bright petals raying;
And the trees bent down to screen them,
Great, wise trees, too old for playing.

Hundreds of them, all together,—
Flashing flocks of flying fairies,—
Crowding through the summer weather,
Seeking where the coolest air is.

And they tell the trees that know them,
As upon their boughs they hover,
Of the things that chance below them,—
How the rose has a new lover.

And the gay Rose laughs, protesting,
“Neighbor Lily is as fickle.”
Then they search where birds are nesting,
And their feathers softly tickle.

Then away they all dance, sweeping,
Having drunk their fill of gladness.
But the trees, their night-watch keeping,
Thrill with tender, pitying sadness;

For they know of bleak December,
When each bough left cold and bare is,—
When they only shall remember
The bright visits of the fairies,—

When the roses and the lilies
Shall be gone, to come back never
From the land where all so still is
That they sleep and sleep forever.

359

THE LONELY ROSE.

“To a heaven far away
Went the Red Rose when she died:”
So I heard the White Rose say,
As she swayed from side to side
In the chill October blast!
In the garden leaves fall fast,—
This of roses is the last.

Said the White Rose, “O my Red Rose,
O my Rose so fair to see,
When like thee I am a dead rose
Shall I in thy heaven be?”
O the drear October blast!
In the garden leaves fall fast,—
This of roses is the last.

“From that heavenly place, last night,
To me in a dream she came,—
Stood there in the pale moonlight,
And she seemed, my Rose, the same.”
O the chill October blast!
In the garden leaves fall fast,—
This of roses is the last.

“Only it maybe, perchance,
That her leaves were redder grown,
And they seemed to thrill and dance
As by gentle breezes blown.”
O the drear October blast!
In the garden leaves fall fast,—
This of roses is the last.

360

“And she told me, sweetly singing,
Of that heavenly place afar
Where the air with song is ringing,
Where the souls of dead flowers are.”
O the chill October blast!
In the garden leaves fall fast,—
This of roses is the last.

“And she bade me not to fail her,
Not to lose my heart with fear
When I saw the skies turn paler
With the sickness of the year,—
I should be beyond the blast
And the leaves now falling fast,
In that heavenly place at last.”

SUMMER CHANGES.

Sang the Lily, and sang the Rose,
Out of the heart of my garden close:
“O joy, O joy of the summer-tide!”
Sang the Wind, as it moved about them:
“Roses were made for the Wind to love them,
Dear little buds, in the leaves that hide!”

Sang the Trees, as they rustled together:
“Oh, the joy of the summer weather!
Roses and Lilies, how do you fare?”
Sang the Red Rose, and sang the White:
“Glad we are of the Sun's large light,
And the songs of birds that dart through the air.”

361

Lily, and Rose, and tall, green Tree,
Swaying boughs where the bright birds be,
Thrilled by music, and trembling with wings,
How glad they were on that summer day!
Little they recked of skies cold and gray,
Or the dreary dirge that a Storm-wind sings.

Golden butterflies gleam in the Sun,
Laugh at the flowers and kiss each one;
And great bees come, with their sleepy tune,
To sip their honey and circle round;
And the flowers are lulled by that drowsy sound,
And fall asleep in the heart of the noon.

A small, white cloud in a sky of blue;
Roses and Lilies, what will they do?
For a Wind springs up and sings in the Trees;
Down comes the rain. The garden's awake:
Roses and Lilies begin to quake,
That were rocked to sleep by the gentle breeze.

Ah, Roses and Lilies! Each delicate petal
The Wind and the rain together unsettle,—
This side and that side the tall Trees sway:
But the Wind goes by, and the rain stops soon,
And the shadow lifts from the face of the noon,
And the flowers are glad in the Sun's warm ray.

Sing, my Lilies, and sing, my Roses,
With never a dream that the Summer closes;
But the Trees are old, and I fancy they tell,
Each unto each, how the Summer flies:
They remember the last year's wintry skies;
But that Summer returns, the Trees know well.

362

A RUINED GARDEN.

All my roses are dead in my Garden—
What shall I do?
Winds in the night, without pity or pardon,
Came there and slew.

All my song-birds are dead in their bushes—
Woe for such things!
Robins and linnets and blackbirds and thrushes,
Dead, with stiff wings.

Oh, my Garden! rifled and flowerless,
Waste now and drear;
Oh, my Garden! barren and bowerless,
Through all the year.

Oh, my dead birds! each in his nest there,
So cold and stark;
What was the horrible death that pressed there
When skies were dark?

What shall I do for my roses' sweetness,
The summer round,—
For all my Garden's divine completeness
Of scent and sound?

I will leave my Garden for winds to harry;
Where once was peace,
Let the bramble-vine and the wild brier marry,
And greatly increase.

But I will go to a land men know not,—
A far, still land,
Where no birds come, and where roses blow not
And no trees stand:

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Where no fruit grows, where no spring makes riot,
But, row on row,
Heavy and red and pregnant with quiet
The poppies blow.

And there shall I be made whole of sorrow,
Have no more care,—
No bitter thought of the coming morrow,
Or days that were.

University of Virginia Library

LAST GARDEN SECRETS.

ROSES AND THE NIGHTINGALE.

FLOWER FAIRIES.

THE LONELY ROSE.

SUMMER CHANGES.

A RUINED GARDEN.