I saw thy beauty in its high estate
Of perfect empire, where at set of sun
In the cool twilight of thy lucent leaves
The dewy freshness told that day was done.
Hast thou no gift beyond thine ivory cone’s
Surpassing loveliness? Art thou not near—
More near than we—to nature’s silentness;
Is it not voiceful to thy finer ear?
When our babe he goeth walking in his garden,
Around his tinkling feet the sunbeams play;
The posies they are good to him,
And bow them as they should to him,
As fareth he upon his kingly way;
And birdlings of the wood to him
Make music, gentle music, all the day,
When our babe he goeth walking in his garden.
...
“se dio ti lasci, lettor, prender frutto
Di tua lezione.”
I passed by a garden, a little Dutch garden,
Where useful and pretty things grew,—
Heart’s-ease and tomatoes, and pinks and potatoes,
And lilies and onions and rue.
I saw in that garden, that little Dutch garden,
A chubby Dutch man with a spade,
And a rosy Dutch frau with a shoe like a scow,
And a flaxen haired little Dutch maid...
Fair is each budding thing the garden shows,
From spring’s frail crocus to the latest bloom
Of fading autumn. Every wind that blows
Across that glowing tract sips rare perfume
From all the tangled blossoms tossing there;—
Soft winds, they fain would linger long, nor any farther fare.
The morning-glories ripple o’er the hedge
And...
Dumb Mother of all music, let me rest
On thy great heart while summer days pass by;
While all the heat up-quivers, let me lie
Close gathered to the fragrance of thy breast.
Let not the pipe of birds from some high nest
Give voice unto a thought of melody,
Nor dreaming clouds afloat along the sky
Meet any wind of promise from the west....
From The Atlantic Magazine
WHEN to the garden of untroubled thought
I came of late, and saw the open door,
And wished again to enter, and explore
The sweet, wild ways with stainless bloom inwrought,
And bowers of innocence with beauty fraught,
It seemed some purer voice must speak before
I dared to tread that garden loved...
I Passed by a garden, a little Dutch garden,
Where useful and pretty things grew,—
Heart’s-ease and tomatoes, and pinks and potatoes,
And lilies and onions and rue.
I saw in that garden, that little Dutch garden,
A chubby Dutch man with a spade,
And a rosy Dutch frau with a shoe like a scow,
And a flaxen-haired little Dutch maid...
Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown!
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the roses blown.
For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves,
...
In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down’s edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
The steep, square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses...
