Poems and Lancashire Songs :: :: University of Virginia Library

The land has its gardens of roses,
Its flowers of every hue,
Which close as the daylight closes,
And wake to the morning dew;
It has sweet-scented groves of pleasure,
Where the bee roves all day long,
And, at eve, with her load of treasure,
Flies home to a drowsy song.

II

There, summer her mantle of verdure,
With posies so sweet enweaves,

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That the sunshine delays on their beauty,
Till it falls asleep in the leaves;
And the spell-bound rain comes dreeping,
To brighten their eyes anew;
And their folds are by young winds fondled,
And kist by the silvery dew.

III

But the grand old sea hides wonders
That never met mortal eye,—
Bright bowers that never have rustled
To soft wind's dreamy sigh;
Strange groves of mystical beauty,
And flowers of rainbow hue.
Bloom wild in those old sea-gardens,
All under the waters blue!

IV

And when the pale moon is sleeping,
At night, on the trembling sea,

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And the coral-paved halls of Neptune
Re-echo the kelpies' glee:
Oh, the floral festoons of magic,
That curtain those pearly caves,
Where the water-sprites revel in splendour,
All under the drowsy waves!

V

Ye fairy-tinged groves of ocean,—
Your delicate banners wave,
Where the fisherman sleeps in the lonely deeps,
In his cold, uncrowded grave:
Wave on your beautiful tendrils,
In your gardens wild and free,
Caressed by the gleaming waters,
Of the grand old heaving sea!