University of Virginia Library

It was a garden, fanciful and fair,
That showed an artist's hand, a lover's care,
The patient waiting of an iron will,
A nurse's watch, a calm physician's skill,
The master's moulding counsel and control,
While woman's presence purified the whole.
For, lo, the blooms that ever youth renew,
In radiant robes and draperies of dew,
Were sure their magic mistress prized them much,
Her influence felt and trembled at her touch—
Smiled as she smoothed their glossy cheeks, and broke
In brighter blushes, when with praise she spoke.
Such was the garden, so serene and gay,
As if it ne'er declined from green to gray—
And never winter with its blasting breath,
Like sudden fear, had darkened it in death—
Nor change, as evil thoughts, would gnaw at root,
The russet globes and yellow spheres of fruit.
Here once I lingered, lying in the shade;
And near me rang the labourer's ready spade,
Striking a stone, that checked his eager toil,
To sweat an extra sixpence from the soil;
As some usurious farmer haply bound,
Who plagued his drudge and drained the weary ground
Of all its virtue, till its value ceast,
And honoured less his labourer than his beast.
Above I saw the flowers and foliage meet,
And heard the fir cones cracking in the heat;
Yet, higher still, there spread a gorgeous waste
Of leafy branches, sweetly interlaced
I was the centre of a fairy ring,
With Summer treading on the skirts of Spring,
And scattering fragrant freshness in its track—
As to embalm the fallen floweret's wrack.
Around me stretched the plants that climb and creep,
Put forth a hundred hands, and lightly leap
From bough to bough—where happy squirrels hide,
Or mad with frisky frolics swing and slide.
Below me daisies peeped in shyness up,
And rich with gold-dust gleamed the butter-cup.
'Twas sultry weather—yea, a gentle drouth
Had paled an unknown blossom's opening mouth,
Had marred the curve and colour of its lips,
And dimmed its white and purple, like eclipse.
Laburnum, lilac, pendulous in knots,
With fine confusion crowded splendid spots
Of sunlight; while on ravished sense and soul,
The hues fell softly and the odours stole.
And that bright wonder of the waving line,
The far horizon, dancing in the shine,
Surprised and pleased. But gleaming cattle graced
The belted pastures, which they cropped and paced,
In stately languor stalking—by the change
Of light and shadow, turned to phantoms strange.
Here hills arose, like visions of the True,
And languished seaward, beautiful and blue.
But there the ocean broadened, flashed and laughed,
Burst into mirth and music, from the waft
Of passing wind, that made the vessels reel,
With glad white water leaping at the keel;
While tightened cordage creaked, and canvas strained,
And great hulls groaned like creatures, prest or pained.
Then in a lull the sailors' jocund cheer,
Was carried mild and mellow to the ear.
By fits the tune of tumbling torrents woke,
And every note a novel message spoke.
Each little leaf a meaning of its own
Murmured, yet indistinctly—every stone,
From out its frozen sleep, gave sermons new;
Nor prophecies, in shimmering pearls of dew,
Were wanting—while the dreaming plant and flower,
In lazy slumber lapt, a present power
Usurping held—the herbage green and crisped,
A separate precept unexpected lisped.
The very tree-tops, with their rookery bent,
Talked to me in a sigh intelligent,
That swept them—but the tenants, poised on high,
Seemed scribbled on the faint and sketchy sky.
Which (as I nodded) looked too blank and bare,
With curling vapours still and stagnant air—
A dismal reflex of the poorest part,
Projected by the baldest painter's art.
As by a craftsman prompt to interpose,
The rough and ready patches that he knows,
With sapient sameness—and in every piece,
His everlasting flower or flock of geese;
The flash of sunshine, or provoking blue
Monotonously bright, and breaking through
His old tame clouds—those miserable tricks,
At which though hackneyed now he never sticks;
And, lo, he gives us calmly as before,
The well-known waves that beat the well-known shore;
Eternal iteration of the past,
He reproduces still his first and last,
The academic picture. So, I thought,
Appeared that dulness which the spirit brought—
At least a moment—for from sightless nooks,
The intermittent clamour of the brooks
Rejoicing, roused me slightly—and, in vain,
Accord with outward life I strove to gain;
And listened fondly in a gentle drowse,
As May flowers fell and rested on my brows.
Uplifting, lo, its tall and taper stem.
O'er many a meaner bud and blossom gem,
The feathering foxglove, with its weight of bells,
Drooped in the wind and wove bewitching spells—
Where wind there was—for in the leafy ways,
Some waft forlorn and lost for ever strays;
Though in the open space the air be still,
And weary grasses waver on the hill,
Left by the wandering breezes that they miss,
Vibrating yet to their last loving kiss.
And frequent strains of music, faint and far,
'Scaped from the forest as a door ajar.
The wood-dove's requiem told, in thickets coy,
Supreme content and consecrated joy;
And songless birds for their unblissful fate,
By emulous loudness tried to compensate.
In ordered utterance sweet, his fairy tale
Was poured in passion by the nightingale,
Now garrulous, and eloquently rang
The bloomy bowers with echoes, as he sang.
His plaintive call, his whistle clear and fine,
The tremor and the melody divine,
Suspense more vocal of the tones that hung,
To break in tempest from the trembling tongue;
Seemed accents as of mourners who condole,
Or wrung by terror from a tortured soul—
Forced with reluctance of relenting lips,
And labouring sore in deep and dire eclipse—
The outburst of a prisoned saint in pain,
His agony of penitential strain.
All sad emotions, every joyous note,
Were gathered in the compass of his throat;
The shout of victory in triumphant heat,
The wail of desperation and defeat.
The poles of passion, feeling's every form
Appeared to meet in stillness or in storm.
Yea, counter clamours blent in loving lease,
The cry of war, the lullaby of peace—
The soft low laughter of the whispering trees,
The pulse of bubbling brooks, the wash of seas;
And evening murmurs with the morning came,
The suppliant's sigh with revellers' wild acclaim—
The hymn of happy feasts, the dirge of doom,
The rival chords of gladness and of gloom—
The noise of torrents and the lisp of leaves,
With sobbings of the heart that broods and grieves—
The moan of wounded pines and cypress tops,—
With ripple from the raincloud on the copse—
The secret plaint of every clime and cult—
All mingled madly in one fierce result;
Joined without jarring, mixed within the soul,
A strange and stirring, but harmonious whole.
It was the voice of Nature and of Fate,
Prophetic, frenzied, full, articulate;
Now breathing mystic babble, in its whim,
Old oracles and psalms and sayings dim;
Now giving voice and volume to the dumb,
And bodying forth the end of things to come.
The wayward cuckoo, wrapt in shades remote,
Denied his absence by a distant note;
Then chuckling past and gabbled, as he told,
With hoarse and husky voice his song was old—
That Spring was gone, and he the time mis-spent,
Foreboding changes after the event.
Between the bleatings of a peevish calf,
The shy woodpecker's idiotic laugh
Grated discordant, from his lonely ledge,
A blasted branch that broke the forest's edge;
Till frightened by his voice, as well he might,
Yet farther off he winged his heavy flight—
To tap fresh trees, where timid humour bids,
Like ghostly workmen nailing coffin lids.
But all the scenes, and every sound that stirred,
From me seemed flowing or to me referred,
The pivot of the play—my dreamy brain
Wound up the puppets, and unwound again—
Projected fancies, outward forms, at will,—
Selecting, colouring, and creating still,
To suit the impulse of the hour. Afar,
Across the sun a cloud's obtruded bar
Lay burning, smouldering in the smothered glare,
Which burst at times from its imprisoned lair.
Not many clouds the keenest gaze could spy,
Scrawled here and there and scattered on the sky.
But each one looked a thwart and thunderous sign,
With sanctions sad and imminence malign;
Like tragic pages from the book of doom,
And traced by trembling hands in hues of gloom.
While muffled notes and undertones exprest,
Some nameless sorrow with a vague unrest.
But silence haunted, unimpaired and whole,
The far-withdrawn and deep-sequestered soul.
For all the uproar of the mightiest mart,
Has not an echo for the hidden heart
Of tranquil minds, with treasures set above,
And lost in lapses of celestial love.
But as I stood betwixt the gloom and gleam,
Behold the revelation and the dream.

Subdued and sudden, as a conscious pause,
Which breeds expectance of a sounding clause
About to come, in some sweet period's swell,
Whose undulations softly rose and fell,
Like ocean murmurs, till the labouring throes
Ceased but to soar and sing a grander close:
Thus was the sleep that came in pregnant calm,
And o'er me shed the splendour of its charm.
I dreamed of lovely women. O how fair,
Their figures in the mild and mellow air,
Serene and settled in their heavenly home;
As ships in shadow on the moonlit foam,
Which ride at anchor lightly. How they leant,
Between the crimson cloudlets' radiant rent,
Against the purple twilight, all aglow,
As listening to a tale of long ago—
A tale of love and soft as tender tears,
Mixed with the music of forgotten years.
They leant, and listening oftentimes they quaffed
From golden cups, and delicately laughed;
But bright the dew of dainty weeping still
At intervals would rise, and flooding fill
The glorious globes of their great eyes intent,
With looks of sorrow pure and penitent;
Till wonder wiped the healing drops away,
And joy succeeded. Without stint or stay
Each drank the living breezes, and her bust,
Transported with the rapture of its trust,
Heaved beautifully big; while sudden bloom,
Broke through the circles of the gorgeous gloom.
The sun, the moon, and many stars were there,
And quivered in the quiet of the air—
Not as on earth—of glare and dimness stript,
And deep in hues of pensive periods dipt.
The sea of separation was no more,
Inviting waves were welcomed by the shore
And played in pleasure, as they fondly roll'd
Fresh freights of diamond dust and dust of gold.
Then some one spoke. It was a voice so sweet,
I cannot charge my memory to repeat
The hidden riches, yet would I regain
Faint fragments of the bright and broken strain.
A miracle of sense was in me wrought,
And this expression of the song I caught.
“A happy period, as it orbs and grows,
Unfolds its years as petals of the rose.
The tears of trouble turn to glittering gems,
That make a nation's noblest diadems.
And she who fled through many a fiery flood,
Or trailed her modest robes in treacherous mud,
Now goes through pastures green, by placid streams,
And hears the waters babble in their dreams.”
Then cried another, from behind a cloud,
Whose voice vibrated trumpet-like and loud:—
“She is avenged of all the evil done,
Beneath the silence of the moon and sun,
By wise endurance; and her white-washed hands,
Baptized in blood, are strong as iron bands.
By suffering sifted, purified by prayers,
As priestess on the white-worn altar stairs,
She stands repentant, clothed in raiment white,
Crowned with her sorrows changed to love and light.”
Yet more perchance I know, but wherefore harm
By repetition what will lose its charm?
Antiphony it seemed of anthem joy—
As in cathedrals calm man calls to boy
Across the holy interspace, and each
With emulation wrestles to outreach
His fellow, in the choral passion's height,
The challenge, answer, rapture, and delight.
Aud still in dreams of wonderment, I drew
Some testimony to the good and true,
In woman's world; I saw the figures list,
With floating limbs and draperies of mist
And leaning forms, to catch the uttered word;
While a low wind of laughter wavelets stirr'd,
That more than music were yet were not speech,
Like spell-bound waters washing on a beach.

I woke reluctant, yet refreshed, and round
The messages of modulated sound
Dropt down the wind. I saw the mower's scythe
Glance in the clover, like a serpent lithe:
Before him blossoms, climbing to the knee,
Retreated blood-red—ebbing as the sea.
And as I gazed, the hills and levels long,
Brimmed o'er with laughter and broke out in song.