Chapter L: H. Bailey (1)

THE AWAKENING

You little, eager, peeping thing--
You embryonic point of light
Pushing from out your winter night,
How you do make my pulses sing!
A tiny eye amid the gloom--
The merest speck I scarce had seen--
So doth God's rapture rend the tomb
In this wee burst of April green!

And lo, 'tis here--and lo! 'Tis there--
Spurting its jets of sweet desire
In upward curling threads of fire
Like tapers kindling all the air.
Why, scarce it seems an hour ago
These branches clashed in bitter cold;
What Power hath set their veins aglow?
O soul of mine, be bold, be bold!
If from this tree, this blackened thing,
Hard as the floor my feet have prest,
This flame of joy comes clamoring
In hues as red as robin's breast
Waking to life this little twig--
O faith of mine, be big! Be big!

ANGELA MORGAN

SHADE

The kindliest thing God ever made,
His hand of very healing laid
Upon a fevered world, is shade.

His glorious company of trees
Throw out their mantles, and on these
The dust-stained wanderer finds ease.

Green temples, closed against the beat
Of noontime's blinding glare and heat,
Open to any pilgrim's feet.

The white road blisters in the sun;
Now, half the weary journey done,
Enter and rest, Oh, weary one!

And feel the dew of dawn still wet
Beneath thy feet, and so forget
The burning highway's ache and fret.

This is God's hospitality,
And whoso rests beneath a tree
Hath cause to thank Him gratefully.

THEODOSIA GARRISON

SELECTION FROM "UNDER THE TREES"

The wonderful, strong, angelic trees,
With their blowing locks and their bared great knees
And nourishing bosoms, shout all together,
And rush and rock through the glad wild weather.

They are so old they teach me,
With their strong hands they reach me,
Into their breast my soul they take,
And keep me there for wisdom's sake.

They teach me little prayers;
To-day I am their child;
The sweet breath of their innocent airs
Blows through me strange and wild.

* * * * *

I never feel afraid
Among the trees;
Of trees are houses made;
And even with these,
Unhewn, untouched, unseen,
Is something homelike in the safe sweet green,
Intimate in the shade.

* * * * *

We are all brothers! Come, let's rest awhile
In the great kinship. Underneath the trees
Let's be at home once more, with birds and bees
And gnats and soil and stone. With these I must
Acknowledge family ties. Our mother, the dust,
With wistful and investigating eyes
Searches my soul for the old sturdiness,
Valor, simplicity! Stout virtues these,
We learned at her dear knees.
Friend, you and I
Once played together in the good old days.
Do you remember? Why, brother, down what wild ways
We traveled, when--
That's right! Draw close to me!
Come now, let's tell the tale beneath the old roof-tree.

ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH

A GARDEN FRIEND

O comrade tree, perhaps alive as I--
One process lacking of this mortal clay--
Give me your constant outlook to the sky,
The courtesy and cheer that fill your day.

Your noble gift of perfect service teach;
Your wisdom in the wild storm softly bent
Aware 'twill end; your patience that can reach
Across the years from clod to firmament.

CATHERINE MARKHAM (MRS. EDWIN MARKHAM)

A LADY OF THE SNOWS

The mountain hemlock droops her lacy branches
Oh, so tenderly
In the summer sun!
Yet she has power to baffle avalanches--
She, rising slenderly
Where the rivers run.

So pliant yet so powerful! Oh, see her
Spread alluringly
Her thin sea-green dress!
Now from white winter's thrall the sun would free her
To bloom unenduringly
In his glad caress.

HARRIET MONROE

THE TREE

Spread, delicate roots of my tree,
Feeling, clasping, thrusting, growing;
Sensitive pilgrim root tips roaming everywhere.
Into resistant earth your filaments forcing,
Down in the dark, unknown, desirous:
The strange ceaseless life of you, eating and drinking of earth,
The corrosive secretions of you, breaking the stuff of the world to
your will.

Tips of my tree in the springtime bursting to terrible beauty,
Folded green life, exquisite, holy exultant;
I feel in you the splendour, the autumn of ripe fulfilment,
Love and labour and death, the sacred pageant of life.
In the sweet curled buds of you,
In the opening glory of leaves, tissues moulded of green light;
Veined, cut, perfect to type,
Each one like a child of high lineage bearing the sigil of race.

The open hands of my tree held out to the touch of the air
As love that opens its arms and waits on the lover's will;
The curtsey, the sway, and the toss of the spray as it sports with the
breeze;
Rhythmical whisper of leaves that murmur and move in the light;
Crying of wind in the boughs, the beautiful music of pain:
Thus do you sing and say
The sorrow, the effort, the sweet surrender, the joy.

Come! tented leaves of my tree;
High summer is here, the moment of passionate life,
The hushed, the maternal hour.
Deep in the shaded green your mystery shielding,
Heir of the ancient woods and parent of forests to be,
Lo! to your keeping is given the Father's life-giving thought;
The thing that is dream and deed and carries the gift of the past.
For this, for this, great tree,
The glory of maiden leaves, the solemn stretch of the bough,
The wise persistent roots
Into the stuff of the world their filaments forcing,
Breaking the earth to their need.

* * * * *

Tall tree, your name is peace.
You are the channel of God:
His mystical sap,
Elixir of infinite love, syrup of infinite power,
Swelling and shaping, brooding and hiding,
With out-thrust of delicate joy, with pitiless pageant of death,
Sings in your cells;
Its rhythmical cycle of life
In you is fulfilled.

EVELYN UNDERHILL

"LOVELIEST OF TREES"

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A. E. HOUSMAN

THE SPIRIT OF THE BIRCH

I am the dancer of the wood
I shimmer in the solitude
Men call me Birch Tree, yet I know
In other days it was not so.
I am a Dryad slim and white
Who danced too long one summer night,
And the Dawn found and prisoned me!
Captive I moaned my liberty.
But let the wood wind flutes begin
Their elfin music, faint and thin,
I sway, I bend, retreat, advance,
And evermore--I dance! I dance!

ARTHUR KETCHUM

FAMILY TREES

You boast about your ancient line,
But listen, stranger, unto mine:

You trace your lineage afar,
Back to the heroes of a war
Fought that a country might be free;
Yea, farther--to a stormy sea
Where winter's angry billows tossed,
O'er which your Pilgrim Fathers crossed.
Nay, more--through yellow, dusty tomes
You trace your name to English homes
Before the distant, unknown West
Lay open to a world's behest;
Yea, back to days of those Crusades
When Turk and Christian crossed their blades,
You point with pride to ancient names,
To powdered sires and painted dames;
You boast of this--your family tree;
Now listen, stranger, unto me:

When armored knights and gallant squires,
Your own beloved, honored sires,
Were in their infants' blankets rolled,
My fathers' youngest sons were old;
When they broke forth in infant tears
My fathers' heads were crowned with years,
Yea, ere the mighty Saxon host
Of which you sing had touched the coast,
Looked back as far as you look now.
Yea, when the Druids trod the wood,
My venerable fathers stood
And gazed through misty centuries
As far as even Memory sees.
When Britain's eldest first beheld
The light, my fathers then were eld.
You of the splendid ancestry,
Who boast about your family tree,

Consider, stranger, this of mine--
Bethink the lineage of a Pine.

DOUGLAS MALLOCH

IDEALISTS

Brother Tree:
Why do you reach and reach?
Do you dream some day to touch the sky?
Brother Stream:
Why do you run and run?
Do you dream some day to fill the sea?
Brother Bird:
Why do you sing and sing?
Do you dream--
_Young Man:
Why do you talk and talk and talk?_

ALFRED KREYMBORG

"DRAW CLOSER, O YE TREES"

O quiet cottage room,
Whose casements, looking o'er the garden-close,
Are hid in wildings and the woodbine bloom
And many a clambering rose,

Sweet is thy light subdued,
Gracious and soft, lingering upon my book,
As that which shimmers through the branched wood
Above some dreamful nook!

Leaning within my chair,
Through the curtain I can see the stir--
The gentle undulations of the air--
Sway the dark-layered fir;

And, in the beechen green,
Mark many a squirrel romp and chirrup loud;
While far beyond, the chestnut-boughs between,
Floats the white summer cloud.

Through the loopholes in the leaves,
Upon the yellow slopes of far-off farms,
I see the rhythmic cradlers and the sheaves
Gleam in the binders' arms.

At times I note, nearby,
The flicker tapping on some hollow bole;
And watch the sun, against the sky,
The fluting oriole;

Or, when the day is done,
And the warm splendors make the oak-top flush,
Hear him, full-throated in the setting sun,--
The darling wildwood thrush.

O sanctuary shade
Enfold one round! I would no longer roam:
Let not the thought of wandering e'er invade
This still, reclusive home!

Draw closer, O ye trees!
Veil from my sight e'en the loved mountain's blue;
The world may be more fair beyond all these,
Yet I would know but you!

LLOYD MIFFLIN

TREES

In the Garden of Eden, planted by God,
There were goodly trees in the springing sod,--

Trees of beauty and height and grace,
To stand in splendor before His face.

Apple and hickory, ash and pear,
Oak and beech and the tulip rare,

The trembling aspen, the noble pine,
The sweeping elm by the river line;

Trees for the birds to build and sing,
And the lilac tree for a joy in spring;

Trees to turn at the frosty call
And carpet the ground for their Lord's footfall;

Trees for fruitage and fire and shade,
Trees for the cunning builder's trade;

Wood for the bow, the spear, and the flail,
The keel and the mast of the daring sail;

He made them of every grain and girth,
For the use of man in the Garden of Earth.

Then lest the soul should not lift her eyes
From the gift to the Giver of Paradise,

On the crown of a hill, for all to see,
God planted a scarlet maple tree.

BLISS CARMAN

THE TREES

There's something in a noble tree--
What shall I say? a soul?
For 'tis not form, or aught we see
In leaf or branch or bole.
Some presence, though not understood,
Dwells there alway, and seems
To be acquainted with our mood,
And mingles in our dreams.

I would not say that trees at all
Were of our blood and race,
Yet, lingering where their shadows fall,
I sometimes think I trace
A kinship, whose far-reaching root
Grew when the world began,
And made them best of all things mute
To be the friends of man.

Held down by whatsoever might
Unto an earthly sod,
They stretch forth arms for air and light,
As we do after God;
And when in all their boughs the breeze
Moans loud, or softly sings,
As our own hearts in us, the trees
Are almost human things.

What wonder in the days that burned
With old poetic dream,
Dead Phaethon's fair sisters turned
To poplars by the stream!
In many a light cotillion stept
The trees when fluters blew;
And many a tear, 'tis said, they wept
For human sorrow too.

Mute, said I? They are seldom thus;
They whisper each to each,
And each and all of them to us,
In varied forms of speech.
"Be serious," the solemn pine
Is saying overhead;
"Be beautiful," the elm-tree fine
Has always finely said;

"Be quick to feel," the aspen still
Repeats the whole day long;
While, from the green slope of the hill,
The oak-tree adds, "Be strong."
When with my burden, as I hear
Their distant voices call,
I rise, and listen, and draw near,
"Be patient," say they all.

SAMUEL VALENTINE COLE

THE POPLARS

My poplars are like ladies trim,
Each conscious of her own estate;
In costume somewhat over prim,
In manner cordially sedate,
Like two old neighbours met to chat
Beside my garden gate.

My stately old aristocrats--
I fancy still their talk must be
Of rose-conserves and Persian cats,
And lavender and Indian tea;--
I wonder sometimes as I pass
If they approve of me.

I give them greeting night and morn,
I like to think they answer, too,
With that benign assurance born
When youth gives age the reverence due,
And bend their wise heads as I go
As courteous ladies do.

Long may you stand before my door,
Oh, kindly neighbours garbed in green,
And bend with rustling welcome o'er
The many friends who pass between;
And where the little children play
Look down with gracious mien.

THEODOSIA GARRISON

TREES

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

JOYCE KILMER

THE LOST GARDENS OF THE HEART

AS IN A ROSE-JAR

_As in a rose-jar filled with petals sweet
Blown long ago in some old garden place,
Mayhap, where you and I, a little space
Drank deep of love and knew that love was fleet--
Or leaves once gathered from a lost retreat
By one who never will again retrace
Her silent footsteps--one, whose gentle face
Was fairer than the roses at her feet;_

_So, deep within the vase of memory
I keep my dust of roses fresh and dear
As in the days before I knew the smart
Of time and death. Nor aught can take from me
The haunting fragrance that still lingers here--
As in a rose-jar, so within the heart!_

THOMAS S. JONES, JR.

IN AN OLD GARDEN

Old phantoms haunt it of the long-ago;
Old ghosts of old-time lovers and of dreams:
Within the quiet sunlight there, meseems,
I see them walking where those lilies blow.
The hardy phlox sways to some garments' flow;
The salvia there with sudden scarlet streams,
Caught from some ribbon of some throat that gleams,
Petunia fair, in flounce and furbelow.
I seem to hear their whispers in each wind
That wanders 'mid the flowers. There they stand!
Among the shadows of that apple tree!
They are not dead, whom still it keeps in mind,
This garden, planted by some lovely hand
That keeps it fragrant with its memory.

MADISON CAWEIN

THE GARDEN OF DREAMS

My heart is a garden of dreams
Where you walk when day is done,
Fair as the royal flowers,
Calm as the lingering sun.

Never a drouth comes there,
Nor any frost that mars,
Only the wind of love
Under the early stars,--

The living breath that moves
Whispering to and fro,
Like the voice of God in the dusk
Of the garden long ago.

BLISS CARMAN

HOMESICK

O my garden! lying whitely in the moonlight and the dew,
Far across the leagues of distance flies my heart to-night to you,
And I see your stately lilies in the tender radiance gleam
With a dim, mysterious splendor, like the angels of a dream!

I can see the stealthy shadows creep along the ivied wall,
And the bosky depths of verdure where the drooping vine-leaves fall,
And the tall trees standing darkly with their crowns against the sky,
While overhead the harvest moon goes slowly sailing by.

I can see the trellised arbor, and the roses' crimson glow,
And the lances of the larkspurs all glittering, row on row,
And the wilderness of hollyhocks, where brown bees seek their spoil,
And butterflies dance all day long, in glad and gay turmoil.

O, the broad paths running straightly, north and south and east and
west!
O, the wild grape climbing sturdily to reach the oriole's nest!
O, the bank where wild flowers blossom, ferns nod and mosses creep
In a tangled maze of beauty over all the wooded steep!

Just beyond the moonlit garden I can see the orchard trees,
With their dark boughs overladen, stirring softly in the breeze,
And the shadows on the greensward, and within the pasture bars
The white sheep huddling quietly beneath the pallid stars.

O my garden! lying whitely in the moonlight and the dew,
Far across the restless ocean flies my yearning heart to you,
And I turn from storied castle, hoary fane, and ruined shrine,
To the dear, familiar pleasaunce where my own white lilies shine--

With a vague, half-startled wonder if some night in Paradise,
From the battlements of heaven I shall turn my longing eyes
All the dim, resplendent spaces and the mazy stardrifts through
To my garden lying whitely in the moonlight and the dew!

JULIA C. R. DORR

THE WAYS OF TIME

As butterflies are but winged flowers,
Half sorry for their change, who fain,
So still and long they live on leaves,
Would be thought flowers again.--

E'en so my thoughts, that should expand,
And grow to higher themes above,
Return like butterflies to lie
On the old things I love.

WILLIAM H. DAVIES

A MIDSUMMER GARDEN

There is a little garden-close,
Girdled by golden apple trees,
That through the long sweet summer hours
Is haunted by the hum of bees.

The poppy tosses here its torch,
And the tall bee-balm flaunts its fire,
And regally the larkspur lifts
The slender azure of its spire.

And from the phlox and mignonette
Rich attars drift on every hand;
And when star-vestured twilight comes
The pale moths weave a saraband.

And crickets in the aisles of grass
With their clear fifing pierce the hush;
And somewhere you may hear anear
The passion of the hermit-thrush.

It is a place where dreams convene,
Dreams of the dead years gone astray,
Of love and loveliness borne back
From some forgotten yesterday.

It is a memory-hallowed spot
Where joy assumes its vernal guise,
And two walk silent side by side,
Youth's glory shining in their eyes.

CLINTON SCOLLARD

THE WHITE ROSE

This is the spirit flower,
The ghost of an old regret;
All night she stands in the garden-close,
And her face with tears is wet.
But I love the pale white rose,
For she always seems to me
A pallid nun who dreams all day
Of a distant memory.

Alas! how well I know
That every garden spot
Is haunted by a gentle ghost
Who will not be forgot.
In the garden of the heart,
Ere the sun of life is set,
O many a wild rose blooms and dreams
Of many an old regret!

CHARLES HANSON TOWNE

A HAUNTED GARDEN

Between the moss and stone
The lonely lilies rise;
Wasted and overgrown
The tangled garden lies.
Weeds climb about the stoop
And clutch the crumbling walls;
The drowsy grasses droop--
The night wind falls.

The place is like a wood;
No sign is there to tell
Where rose and iris stood
That once she loved so well.
Where phlox and asters grew,
A leafless thornbush stands,
And shrubs that never knew
Her tender hands....

Over the broken fence
The moonbeams trail their shrouds;
Their tattered cerements
Cling to the gauzy clouds,
In ribbons frayed and thin--
And startled by the light,
Silence shrinks deeper in
The depths of night.

Useless lie spades and rakes;
Rust's on the garden-tools.
Yet, where the moonlight makes
Nebulous silver pools,
A ghostly shape is cast--
Something unseen has stirred ...
Was it a breeze that passed?
Was it a bird?

Dead roses lift their heads
Out of a grassy tomb;
From ruined pansy-beds
A thousand pansies bloom.
The gate is opened wide--
The garden that has been,
Now blossoms like a bride ...
_Who entered in?_

LOUIS UNTERMEYER

THE DUSTY HOUR-GLASS

It had been a trim garden,
With parterres of fringed pinks and gillyflowers,
and smooth-raked walks.
Silks and satins had brushed the box edges
of its alleys.
The curved stone lips of its fishponds
had held the rippled reflections of tricorns and
powdered periwigs.
The branches of its trees had glittered with lanterns,
and swayed to the music of flutes and violins.

Now, the fishponds are green with scum;
And paths and flower-beds
are run together and overgrown.
Only at one end is an octagonal Summerhouse
not yet in ruins.
Through the lozenged panes of its windows,
you can see the interior:
A dusty bench; a fireplace,
with a lacing of letters carved in the stone above it;
A broken ball of worsted
rolled away into a corner.

_Dolci, dolci, i giorni passati!_

AMY LOWELL

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

I went out to the hazel wood
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream,
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor,
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl,
With apple-blossom in her hair,
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

W. B. YEATS

THE THREE CHERRY TREES

There were three cherry trees once,
Grew in a garden all shady;
And there for delight of so gladsome a sight,
Walked a most beautiful lady,
Dreamed a most beautiful lady.

Birds in those branches did sing,
Blackbird and throstle and linnet,
But she walking there was by far the most fair--
Lovelier than all else within it,
Blackbird and throstle and linnet.

But blossoms to berries do come,
All hanging on stalks light and slender,
And one long summer's day charmed that lady away,
With vows sweet and merry and tender;
A lover with voice low and tender.

Moss and lichen the green branches deck;
Weeds nod in its paths green and shady;
Yet a light footstep seems there to wander in dreams,
The ghost of that beautiful lady,
That happy and beautiful lady.

WALTER DE LA MARE

OLD GARDENS

The white rose tree that spent its musk
For lovers' sweeter praise,
The stately walks we sought at dusk,
Have missed thee many days.

Again, with once-familiar feet,
I tread the old parterre--
But, ah, its bloom is now less sweet
Than when thy face was there.

I hear the birds of evening call;
I take the wild perfume;
I pluck a rose--to let it fall
And perish in the gloom.

ARTHUR UPSON

THE BLOOMING OF THE ROSE

What is it like, to be a rose?

_Old Roses, softly_, "Try and see."

Nay, I will tarry. Let me be
In my green peacefulness and smile.
I will stay here and dream awhile.
'Tis well for little buds to dream,
Dream--dream--who knows--
Say, is it good to be a rose?
Old roses, tell me! Is it good?

_Old Roses, very softly_, "Good."

I am afraid to be a rose!
This little sphere wherein I wait,
Curled up and small and delicate,
Lets in a twilight of pure green,
Wherein are dreams of night and morn
And the sweet stillness of a world
Where all things are that are unborn.

_Old Roses_, "Better to be born."

I cannot be a bud for long.
My sheath is like a heart full blown,
And I, the silence of a song
Withdrawn into that heart alone,
Well knowing that it shall be sung.
Outside the great world comes and goes--
I think I doubt, to be a rose--

_Old Roses_, "Doubt? To be a Rose!"

ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH

THE GARDEN OF MNEMOSYNE

There are no roses in the garden now,
The summer birds have vanished oversea,
The ashen keys hang rusty on the bough,
Autumn's gold ensigns flame from tree to tree.

Music and perfume sleep, and light is fled,
Autumn's fine gold is faery gold, we know.
Where shall we turn for joy when flowers are dead,
When birds are silent, and the cold winds blow?

The summer birds have vanished oversea,
But Memory's palace-courts are full of song;
There sings a nightingale for you and me,
And there a hidden lute plays all day long.

There are no roses in the garden now,
But Memory's garden grows each day more fair;
Sun, moon, and stars her orchard close endow,
And there bloom roses--roses everywhere.

ROSAMUND MARRIOTT WATSON

BALLADE OF THE DREAMLAND ROSE

Where the waves of burning cloud are rolled
On the further shore of the sunset sea,
In a land of wonder that none behold,
There blooms a rose on the Dreamland Tree
That stands in the Garden of Mystery
Where the River of Slumber softly flows;
And whenever a dream has come to be,
A petal falls from the Dreamland Rose.

In the heart of the tree, on a branch of gold,
A silvern bird sings endlessly
A mystic song that is ages old,
A mournful song in a minor key,
Full of the glamour of faery;
And whenever a dreamer's ears unclose
To the sound of that distant melody,
A petal falls from the Dreamland Rose.

Dreams and visions in hosts untold
Throng around on the moonlit lea:
Dreams of age that are calm and cold,
Dreams of youth that are fair and free--
Dark with a lone heart's agony,
Bright with a hope that no one knows--
And whenever a dream and a dream agree,
A petal falls from the Dreamland Rose.

ENVOI

Princess, you gaze in a reverie
Where the drowsy firelight redly glows;
Slowly you raise your eyes to me ...
A petal falls from the Dreamland Rose.

BRIAN HOOKER

THE FLOWERS OF JUNE

These flowers of June
The gates of memory unbar;
These flowers of June
Such old-time harmonies retune,
I fain would keep the gates ajar,
So full of sweet enchantment are
These flowers of June.

Was it the bloom of the laurel sprays,
That wakened remembrance of singing birds?
Or, was it the charm of remembered words,
That set my heart singing through somber days?
I longed for the summer-time, flower and tree;
And lo! the summer-time came with thee.
The bloom is no more, but the charm still stays.

JAMES TERRY WHITE

IN MEMORY'S GARDEN

There is a garden in the twilight lands
Of Memory, where troops of butterflies
Flutter adown the cypress paths, and bands
Of flowers mysterious droop their drowsy eyes.

There through the silken hush come footfalls faint
And hurried through the vague parterres, and sighs
Whispering of rapture or of sweet complaint
Like ceaseless parle of bees and butterflies.

And by one lonely pathway steal I soon
To find the flowerings of the old delight
Our hearts together knew--when lo, the moon
Turns all the cypress alleys into white.

THOMAS WALSH

SERENADE

Dark is the iris meadow,
Dark is the ivory tower,
And lightly the young moth's shadow
Sleeps on the passion-flower.

Gone are our day's red roses.
So lovely and lost and few,
But the first star uncloses
A silver bud in the blue.

Night, and a flame in the embers
Where the seal of the years was set,--
When the almond-bough remembers
How shall my heart forget?

MARJORIE L. C. PICKTHALL

"WHAT HEART BUT FEARS A FRAGRANCE?"

What heart but fears a fragrance?
Alien they
Who breathe in the white lilac only May;
For there be other spirits unto whom
Fate's kiss lies dreaming in each stray perfume!

Who mock at ghosts of odour--poor they be!
Bereft the scented balms of memory,
For unto one in April's rain-blest earth
There starts for aye the sharp, glad cry of birth;
And Love will find in rooms unbarred for years
Familiar sweetness loosing sudden tears,
Clasping the will in mastering embrace
As in the presence of a phantom grace.

Then there be odours pungent--fires in Fall
The gipsying of boyhood to recall;
And there be perfumes holy--nay, but one
Whose pang is like none other 'neath the sun
To drown the sinking senses in a joy
Beyond all time to weaken or destroy!
Odours there be that swoon, entreat, caress--
Elusive thrall, to doom or stab or bless;
Each vagrant scent that holds the breath in fee
Doth wed the heart in Life's eternity.

Who fear no wraiths of fragrance--sorry they;
Who breathe in lilac odours only May;
For there be other mortals unto whom
White magic wanders in each stray perfume.

MARTHA GILBERT DICKINSON BIANCHI

YEARS AFTERWARD

It is not sight or sound
That, when a heart forgets,
Most makes it to remember:
It's some old poignant scent re-found--
Like breath of April violets,
Or apples of September.

It isn't song or scene
That stirs the tears again:
It's brush smoke from the hills at night,
Spicy and sweet; or that wet, keen,
Long lost aroma of delight,
Fresh ploughed fields after rain.

NANCY BYRD TURNER

AUTUMNAL

Across the scented garden of my dreams
Where roses grew, Time passes like a thief,
Among my trees his silver sickle gleams,
The grass is stained with many a ruddy leaf;
And on cold winds the petals float away
That were the pride of June and her array.

The bare boughs weave a net upon the sky
To catch Love's wings and his fair body bruise;
There are no flowers in the rosary--
No song-birds in the mournful avenues;
Though on the sodden air not lightly breaks
The elegy of Youth, whom love forsakes.

Ah, Time! one flower of all my garden spare,
One rose of all the roses, that in this
I may possess my love's perfumed hair
And all the crimson secrets of her kiss.
Grant me one rose that I may drink its wine,
And from her lips win the last anodyne.

For I have learnt too many things to live,
And I have loved too many things to die;
But all my barren acres I would give
For one red blossom of eternity,
To animate the darkness and delight
The spaces and the silences of night.

But dreams are tender flowers that in their birth
Are very near to death, and I shall reap,
Who planted wonder, unavailing earth,
Harsh thorns and miserable husks of sleep.
I have had dreams, but have not conquered Time,
And love shall vanish like an empty rhyme.

RICHARD MIDDLETON

"OH, TELL ME HOW MY GARDEN GROWS"

Oh, tell me how my garden grows,
Now I no more may labor there;
Do still the lily and the rose
Bloom on without my fostering care?

Do peonies blush as deep with pride,
The larkspurs burn as bright a blue,
And velvet pansies stare as wide
I wonder, as they used to do?

The tender things that would not blow
Unless I coaxed them, do they raise
Their petals in a sturdy row,
Forgetful, to the stranger's gaze?

Or do they show a paler shade,
And sigh a little in the wind
For one whose sheltering presence made
Their step-dame Nature less unkind?

Oh, tell me how my garden grows,
Where I no more may take delight,
And if some dream of me it knows,
Who dream of it by day and night.

MILDRED HOWELLS

HER GARDEN

This was her dearest walk last year. Her hands
Set all the tiny plants, and tenderly
Pressed firm the unfamiliar soil; and she
It was who watered them at evening time.
She loved them; and I too, because of her.
And now another June has come, while I
Am walking in the shadow, sad, alone.
Yet when I reach the rose-path that was hers,
And breathe the fragrancy of bud and bloom,
She stands beside; the murmur of the leaves,
The well-remembered rustle of her gown,
And low her whisper comes, "My dear! My dear!"
This is her garden. Only she and I--
But always we--may walk its hallowed ways;
And all the thoughts she planted in my heart,
Sunned with her smile, and chastened with her tears,
Again have blossomed--love's perennials.

ELDREDGE DENISON

THE LITTLE GHOST

I knew her for a little ghost
That in my garden walked,--
The wall is high--higher than most--
And the green gate was locked;

And yet I did not think of that
Till after she was gone;
I knew her by the broad white hat,
All ruffled, she had on,

By the dear ruffles round her feet,
By her small hands, that hung
In their lace mitts, austere and sweet,
Her gown's white folds among.

I watched to see if she would stay,
What she would do,--and, oh,
She looked as if she liked the way
I let my garden grow!

She bent above my favorite mint
With conscious garden grace,
She smiled and smiled,--there was no hint
Of sadness in her face;

She held her gown on either side,
To let her slippers show,
And up the walk she went with pride,
The way great ladies go;

And where the wall is built in new,
And is of ivy bare,
She paused,--then opened and passed through
A gate that once was there.

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

ROSES IN THE SUBWAY

A wan-cheeked girl with faded eyes
Came stumbling down the crowded car,
Clutching her burden to her breast
As though she held a star.

Roses, I swear it! Red and sweet
And struggling from her pinched white hands,
Roses ... like captured hostages
From far and fairy lands!

The thunder of the rushing train
Was like a hush.... The flower scent
Breathed faintly on the stale, whirled air
Like some dim sacrament--

I saw a garden stretching out
And morning on it like a crown--
And o'er a bed of crimson bloom
My mother ... stooping down.

DANA BURNET

THE GARDEN OVER-SEAS

A GARDEN PRAYER

_That we are mortals and on earth must dwell
Thou knowest, Allah, and didst give us bread--
And remembering of our souls didst give us food of flowers--
Thy name be hallowed._

THOMAS WALSH

IN THE GARDEN-CLOSE AT MEZRA

In the garden-close at Mezra,
When the cactus was in flower,
We sat apart together
Through the languid noonday hour.

I was her Arab lover,
(Of course it was all in play!)
And I called her "Star-of-Twilight,"
And I called her "Dream-of-Day."

She--has she quite forgotten?
Soothly, I do not know
If ever she tenderly opens
The volume of Long Ago.

But I--I can still remember
Her lips like the cactus flower
In the garden-close at Mezra
At the languid noonday hour!

CLINTON SCOLLARD

THE CACTUS

The scarlet flower, with never a sister-leaf,
Stemless, springs from the edge of the Cactus-thorn:
Thus from the rugged wounds of desperate grief
A beautiful Thought, perfect and pure, is born.

LAURENCE HOPE

THE WHITE PEACOCK

Here where the sunlight
Floodeth the garden,
Where the pomegranate
Reareth its glory
Of gorgeous blossom;
Where the oleanders
Dream through the noontides;
And, like surf o' the sea
Round cliffs of basalt,
The thick magnolias
In billowy masses
Front the sombre green of the ilexes:
Here where the heat lies
Pale blue in the hollows,
Where blue are the shadows
On the fronds of the cactus,
Where pale blue the gleaming
Of fir and cypress,
With the cones upon them
Amber or glowing with virgin gold:
Here where the honey-flower
Makes the heat fragrant,
As though from the gardens
Of Gulistan,
Where the bulbul singeth
Through a mist of roses
A breath were borne:
Here where the dream-flowers,
The cream-white poppies
Silently waver,
And where the Scirocco,
Faint in the hollows,
Foldeth his soft white wings in the sunlight,
And lieth sleeping
Deep in the heart of
A sea of white violets:
Here, as the breath, as the soul of this beauty,
Moveth in silence, and dreamlike, and slowly,
White as a snow-drift in mountain-valleys
When softly upon it the gold light lingers:
White as the foam o' the sea that is driven
O'er billows of azure agleam with sun-yellow:
Cream-white and soft as the breasts of a girl,
Moves the White Peacock, as though through the noontide
A dream of the moonlight were real for a moment.
Dim on the beautiful fan that he spreadeth,
Foldeth and spreadeth abroad in the sunlight,
Dim on the cream-white are blue adumbrations,
Shadows so pale in their delicate blueness
That visions they seem as of vanishing violets,
The fragrant white violets veined with azure,
Pale, pale as the breath of blue smoke in far woodlands.
Here, as the breath, as the soul of this beauty,
White as the cloud through the heats of the noontide
Moves the White Peacock.

WILLIAM SHARP

AT ISOLA BELLA

Once at Isola Bella,
With sunset in the sky,
We stood on the topmost terrace--
You and I.

Around us Lago Maggiore,
Incomparably fair,
Gave back the hues of heaven
To the Italian air.

Then up the marble terrace
Below the cypress trees
Came a flock of milk-white peacocks
With fans spread to the breeze.

Rose-pink on each outspread feather,
Rose-pink upon the crest,--
Never were birds in plumage
So ravishingly drest!

Wherever we walked they followed,
Stately at our feet,
No picture so enchanting
Will any hour repeat.

And here in the murky city
Those milk-white peacocks seem
To follow and follow me ever
Like ghosts of a haunting dream.

JESSIE B. RITTENHOUSE

THE FOUNTAIN

All through the deep blue night
The fountain sang alone;
It sang to the drowsy heart
Of the satyr carved in stone.

The fountain sang and sang
But the satyr never stirred--
Only the great white moon
In the empty heaven heard.

The fountain sang and sang
While on the marble rim
The milk-white peacocks slept,
And their dreams were strange and dim.

Bright dew was on the grass,
And on the ilex, dew,
The dreamy milk-white birds
Were all a-glisten, too.

The fountain sang and sang
The things one cannot tell;
The dreaming peacocks stirred
And the gleaming dew-drops fell.

SARA TEASDALE

THE CHAMPA FLOWER

Supposing I became a champa flower, just for fun, and grew on a branch high up that tree, and shook in the wind with laughter and danced upon the newly budded leaves, would you know me, mother?

You would call, "Baby, where are you?" and I should laugh to myself and keep quite quiet.

I should slyly open my petals and watch you at your work.

When after your bath, with wet hair spread on your shoulders, you walked through the shadow of the champa tree to the little court where you say your prayers, you would notice the scent of the flower, but not know that it came from me.

When after the midday meal you sat at the window reading _Ramayana_, and the tree's shadow fell over your hair and your lap, I should fling my wee little shadow on to the page of your book, just where you were reading.

But would you guess that it was the tiny shadow of your little child?

When in the evening you went to the cow-shed with the lighted lamp in your hand, I should suddenly drop on to the earth again and be your own baby once more, and beg you to tell me a story.

"Where have you been, you naughty child?"

"I won't tell you, mother." That's what you and I would say then.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

IN AN EGYPTIAN GARDEN

Can it be winter otherwhere?
Forsooth, it seems not so!
The moonlight on the garden square
Must be the only snow,
For all about me, fragrant fair,
The blooms of summer blow.

Wine-lipped and beautiful and bland,
The rose displays its dower;
The heavy-scented citron and
The stainless lily-tower;
And whiter than a houri's hand,
El Ful, the Arab flower.

In purple silhouette a palm
Lifts from a vine-wreathed plinth
Against a sky whose cloudless calm
Is hued like hyacinth;
And echoes with a bulbul's psalm
The jasmine labyrinth.

In life's tumultuous ocean swell
Here is a charmed isle;
I hear a late muezzin tell
His holy tale the while,
And like the faint notes of a bell
The boat-songs of old Nile.

Across my spirit thrills no theme
That is not marvel-bright;
I see within the lotus gleam
The nectar of delight,
And, tasting it, I drift and dream
Adown the glamoured night!

CLINTON SCOLLARD

EVENING IN OLD JAPAN

Peaceful and mellow looks the sky to-night
As some great Buddha made of ivory,
Upon whose brow is set a moonstone white,
The shining emblem of its purity.

A dim blue haze like incense, rising high,
Merges together mountain, tree, and stream;
But over all still broods an ivory sky
Cloudless as Buddha's face, one gem agleam.

ANTOINETTE DE COURSEY PATTERSON

REFLECTIONS

When I looked into your eyes,
I saw a garden
With peonies, and tinkling pagodas,
And round-arched bridges
Over still lakes.

A woman sat beside the water
In a rain-blue, silken garment.
She reached through the water
To pluck the crimson peonies
Beneath the surface.

But as she grasped the stems,
They jarred and broke into white-green ripples.
And as she drew out her hand,
The water drops dripping from it
Stained her rain-blue dress like tears.

AMY LOWELL

IN THE GARDEN

Do you remember, Sister,
The golden afternoon
When we looked upon the lotus
And listened to the croon
Of the doves that sat together
Among the flowers of June?

And deep among the valleys
A far, sweet sound was heard--
Some fluter in the forest
That like a magic bird
Sang of the unseen heavens
And mystic Way and Word.

PAI TA-SHUN

THE DESERTED GARDEN

I hear no more the swish of silks
Along the marble walks;
The autumn wind blows sharp and cold
Among the flowerless stalks.

In place of petals of the peach
Fast drifts the yellow leaf;
And looking in the lotus-pond
I see one face of grief.

PAI TA-SHUN

A ROMAN GARDEN

All night above that garden the rose-flushed moon will sail,
Making the darkness deeper where hides the nightingale.
Below the Sabine mountain
The tossed and slender fountain
Will curve, a lily pale;
And where the plumed pine soars tallest,
'Tis there, O nightingale, thou callest;
Where the loud water leaps the highest.
'Tis there, O nightingale, thou criest;
In the dripping luscious dark,
Hark, oh, hark!
Wonderful, delirious,
Soul of joy mysterious.

A garden full of fragrances,
Of pauses and of cadences,
Whence come they all?
Of cypresses and ilex-trees,
Plumes and dark candles like to these
Were long ago Persephone's.

All night within that garden
The glimmering gods of stone,
The satyrs and the naiads
Will laugh to be alone,
In starless courts of shadows
By silence overgrown,
Save for the nightingale's
Wild lyric thither blown.

By pools and dusky closes
Dim shapes will move about,
Twirled wands and masks and faces,
Dancers and wreaths of roses,
The moonlight's trick, no doubt.
A naked nymph upon the stair,
A sculptured vine that clasps the air,--
And then one Bacchic bird somewhere
Will pour his passion out.
All night above that garden the rose-flushed moon will sail,
Making the darkness deeper where hides the nightingale.

Down yonder velvet alley,
Floats Daphne like a feather,
A finger bidding silence,
The dark and she together.
Look, where the secret fount is misting.
Apollo, thou shalt have thy trysting:
For where a ruined sphinx lay smiling
The wood-girl waits thee, white, beguiling.
All night above that garden the rose-flushed moon will sail,
Making the darkness deeper where hides the nightingale.

FLORENCE WILKINSON EVANS

COMO IN APRIL

The wind is Winter, though the sun be Spring:
The icy rills have scarce begun to flow;
The birds unconfidently fly and sing.

As on the land once fell the northern foe,
The hostile mountains from the passes fling
Their vandal blasts upon the lake below.

Not yet the round clouds of the Maytime cling
Above the world's blue wonder's curving show,
And tempt to linger with their lingering.

Yet doth each slope a vernal promise know:
See, mounting yonder, white as angel's wing.
A snow of bloom to meet the bloom of snow.

* * * * *

Love, need we more than our imagining
To make the whole year May? What though
The wind be Winter if the heart be Spring?

ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON

AN EXILE'S GARDEN

I live in the heart of a garden
With cypresses all about;
To the east and west, and the south and north,
Straight shadowy paths run out.

There are ancient gods in my garden;
They have faces young and pale;
And a hundred thousand roses here
Enrapture the nightingale.

Yet, among the gods of the garden,
The roses and gods, I think,
Daylong, of a far-off clover field,
And the song of a bob-o-link.

SOPHIE JEWETT

THE CLOISTER GARDEN AT CERTOSA

It is a place monastic, set above
The city's pride and pleasuring below;
The benediction of the sky breathes love
Over the olive trees and vines a-row.

The old gray walls are delicate to prayer
And silence; in the corridors dim-lit
Lurks many a painting, many a fresco rare
Done by some brother for the joy of it.

Pale lavender and red pomegranate trees,
Roses and poppies spilling garden sweets;
And tall lush grass and grain, and, circling these,
The cool of cloistral walks and shadowed seats.

By a sun-dial in the center, rests
One brown-robed Father; and his lips recite
Some holy word; little he heeds the jests
Of those who make the world their chief delight.

While Florence, far below, from dreamy towers
Throws back the sun and tolls the tranquil hours.

RICHARD BURTON

A GARDEN IN VENICE

There is a garden in a vineyard set
Beneath the spell of Adriatic skies;
A lovely place of dreams and ecstasies,
Of color tangled in a verdant net,
The shimmer of the low lagoon whose fret
Washes the garden's length, and rose that vies
With rose, pomegranate and tall flowers that rise
Above their fellows in one glory met.
And there I think in the still summer night,
When all the world is sleeping save the moon
And the blest nightingale who shuns the noon,
The closed flowers open out of sheer delight
And the white lilies bow their slender stalks,
For thro' them, 'neath the vines Madonna walks.

DOROTHY FRANCES GURNEY

IN A GARDEN OF GRANADA

The city rumour rises all the day
Across the potted plants along the wall;
The sun and winds upon the slopes hold sway,
Tossing the dust and shadows in a squall.

The sun is old and weary--weary here
Upon the ageing roofs and miradors,
The broken terraces and basins drear
Where each old bell its ancient echoes pours.

Ringing--what memories to ring--to those
That linger here--the lizard and the cat,
That haunt these solitudes in state morose
Through the long day their silent habitat.

Untroubled,--save when in the moonlight steals
Some voice in song across the lower wall,
And sudden magic each old rafter feels,
The while the echoes round it rise and fall.

For as the wail of love or sorrow rings
Along the night soft steps are on the stair
And pathway; in the broken window wings
Are stirring, and white arms are lolling there.

And that old rose tree lifts its head anew,
And there is perfume o'er the hills afar,
From where Alhambra's crescent cleaves the blue
To where agleam Genil and Darro are.

O Voice!--what is thy necromantic word
That all Granada waits adown the years?
Is it the sound some love-swept night has heard?--
The cry of love amid the cry of tears?--

THOMAS WALSH

AMIEL'S GARDEN

His Garden! His bright candelabra trees
En fete. His lilacs steeped in joy! His sky
Limpid and blue! The same flecked shadows lie
Athwart this path he paced. His reveries
Float in the air. His moods, his ecstasies
Still linger charmed. Pale butterflies flit by--
Were one his soul it had not found on high
Banquet more choice than those infinities
He daily knew. And now no one to hear
The hovering hours, the singing grass, to feel
The wrinkles of the soul smooth out, to see
God's shadow bend down from eternity--
His garden empty! Yet I gently steal
Lest I disturb his dreams still smiling near.

GERTRUDE HUNTINGTON MCGIFFERT

EDEN-HUNGER

O that a nest, my mate! were once more ours,
Where we, by vain and barren change untutored,
Could have grave friendships with wise trees and flowers,
And live the great, green life of field and orchard!

From the cold birthday of the daffodils,
E'en to that listening pause that is November,
O to confide in woods, confer with hills,
And then--then, to that palmland you remember,

Fly swift, where seas that brook not Winter's rule
Are one vast violet breaking into lilies;
There where we spent our first strange wedded Yule,
In the far, golden, fire-hearted Antilles.

WILLIAM WATSON

THE GARDEN AT BEMERTON

FOR A FLYLEAF OF HERBERT'S POEMS

Year after year, from dusk to dusk,
How sweet this English garden grows,
Steeped in two centuries' sun and musk,
Walled from the world in gray repose,
Harbor of honey-freighted bees,
And wealthy with the rose.

Here pinks with spices in their throats
Nod by the bitter marigold;
Here nightingales with haunting notes,
When west and east with stars are bold,
From out the twisted hawthorn-trees,
Sing back the weathers old.

All tuneful winds do down it pass;
The leaves a sudden whiteness show,
And delicate noises fill the grass;
The only flakes its spaces know
Are petals blown off briers long,
And heaped on blades below.

Ah! dawn and dusk, year after year,
'Tis more than these that keeps it rare!
We see the saintly Master here,
Pacing along the alleys fair,
And catch the throbbing of a song
Across the amber air!

LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE

IN AN OXFORD GARDEN

As one whose road winds upward turns his face
Unto the valleys where he late hath stood,
Leaning upon his staff in peace to brood
On many a beauty of the distant place,
So I in this cool garden pause a space,
Reviewing many things in many a mood,
Accumulating friends in solitude
From the assembly of my thoughts and days.

ARTHUR UPSON

THE HOMELY GARDEN

"GRANDMOTHER'S GATHERING BONESET"

_Grandmother's gathering boneset to-day;
In the garret she'll dry and hang it away.
Next winter I'll "need" some boneset tea--
I wish she wouldn't think always of me!_

EDITH M. THOMAS

A BREATH OF MINT

What small leaf-fingers veined with emerald light
Lay on my heart that touch of elfin might?

What spirals of sharp perfume do they fling,
To blur my page with swift remembering?

Borne in a country basket marketward,
Their message is a music spirit-heard,

A pebble-hindered lilt and gurgle and run
Of tawny singing water in the sun.

Their coolness brings that ecstasy I knew
Down by the mint-fringed brook that wandered through

My mellow meadows set with linden-trees
Loud with the summer jargon of the bees.

Their magic has its way with me until
I see the storm's dark wing shadow the hill

As once I saw: and draw sharp breath again,
To feel their arrowy fragrance pierce the rain.

O sudden urging sweetness in the air,
Exhaled, diffused about me everywhere,

Yours is the subtlest word the summer saith,
And vanished summers sigh upon your breath.

GRACE HAZARD CONKLING

A SELLER OF HERBS

Black, comely, of abiding cheer,
Three times a week she fares,
Townward from gabled Windermere,
To sell her dainty wares.

Green balms she brings from winding lanes,
And some in handfuls tall,
Of the old days of Annes and Janes,
Grown by a kitchen wall.

Keen mint has she in dewy sprigs,
With spears of violet;
And the spiced bloom of elder-twigs
In a field's hollow set.

My snatch of May I get from her,
In white buds off a tree;
June in one whiff of lavender,
That breaks my heart for me.

The swaying boughs of Windermere,
Each gust that takes the grass,
High over the town roar I hear,
When that old stall I pass.

What homely memories are mine,
At sight of her quaint stalks;
Of grave dusks mellowing like wine
Down long, box-bordered walks;

Of garret windows eastward thrust,
Of rafters shining dim,
And heaped with herbs as gray as dust
All scented to the brim.

This lady of the market-place,
Three times a week and more,
I pray her seasons thick with grace;
And ever at her door,

Shut from the road by wall of stone,
And ample cherry trees,
A garden fair as Herrick's own,
And just as full of bees!

LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE

LAVENDER