 | English Roses |  |
MY LOST GARDEN.
My pretty garden,Framed in the silence of the Chiltern Hills
And hung as those for ever dead and gone
In sun-bright Babylon,
Discrowned by dearth,
But then a glory betwixt Heaven and earth!
With oaks like Arden,
Whereon the silver cloud a season stills
Its wayward flight and leaves at leisure
The liquid treasure,
Which by some magic process turns
To precious gold
The niggard mould,
And fills with dews the empty urns.
I hear it yet,
Nor can forget
The murmurous sound of ceaseless rain
Which haunts the rustling poplar trees,
Touched by no breath of earthly breeze
As of a prisoned soul in pain;
Which in the wondrous land of Long Ago
I drank from open casement
In pure and deep amazement,
At night, from that soft lake of leaves below.
The beeches glimmer,
Far down the slope and up the happy height
In gracious bounties
Of tossing branch and tumbled spray
That soar and sink and melt away
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And six fair counties,
Into a solemn sea of misty light.
Their virginal coy green
Falls like a balm in blessed vision
Of sweeter lands and other skies
Upon the drought of old world-weary eyes
Mocked by the years of vain derision,
And fairies hide between.
My gracious garden,
In this dull barren city pent
I mourn your Eden bowers
And holy flowers
For me unfallen, and without a spot
Of evil, and I miss the pears that harden
To ripeness rich and garment sober
Of mellow scent,
And change their colour with the chill October—
I miss and mourn each little nook and plot.
Soft lawn,
Where daises struggled with the mosses
Dew-sweet but alien, and in joy looked up
And found fair sisters in the buttercup,
To make the gardener crosses,
In dim shy shades withdrawn!
A stranger's foot now on your greensward stands
Regardless of the love
And gentle hands,
Which ministered to all your daily needs
And followed larger creeds
Than those which simply saw the flowers above,
But not the flowers below
And beauty brighter yet within
Which is to God Himself akin,
And thence must overflow.
Far outpost of the armies of the Hills,
Thy wind-swept area
For ever makes with many tones and trills
A music in my breast,
Which cannot rest;
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Inside the glory of its ample girth,
And brings to heavenly birth
Beneath the shelter of the hazel copse
And guardian oaktrees, which did erst environ
The routed Stuart with their arms of iron,
And pure snowdrops.
A fragrance of old herbs and times
Seems mingled with the battle chimes,
Lost honour but not loves
And ladies' gloves
That were the colours of most gallant knights,
And stolen blisses
Of desperate kisses
Snatched from the flame and agony of fights,
In breathless pause
Betwixt the rally
And the sad final clause.
The branching brake,
And gnarled and twisted thorns
On paths with fallen foliage crisper
In fancy's wider Spring awake
And nod their glamoured heads, and whisper
Of deathless morns.
Those graces twine
Their tendrils round my inmost heart,
And strike a deep and nobler chord
Than earthly art;
Until it seems a thing Divine,
And like the Garden of the Lord.
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