The Home Book of Verse Volume Iii Part 33

Adventurous joy it was for me!

I crept beneath the boughs, and found A circle smooth of mossy ground Beneath a poplar tree.

Old garden rose-trees hedged it in, Bedropt with roses waxen-white, Well satisfied with dew and light And careless to be seen.

Long years ago, it might befall, When all the garden flowers were trim, The grave old gardener prided him On these the most of all.

Some lady, stately overmuch, Here moving with a silken noise, Has blushed beside them at the voice That likened her to such.

Or these, to make a diadem, She often may have plucked and twined, Half-smiling as it came to mind, That few would look at them.

Oh, little thought that lady proud, A child would watch her fair white rose, When buried lay her whiter brows, And silk was changed for shroud!

Nor thought that gardener, (full of scorns For men unlearned and simple phrase,) A child would bring it all its praise By creeping through the thorns!

To me upon my low moss seat, Though never a dream the roses sent, Of science or love's compliment, I ween they smelt as sweet.

It did not move my grief to see The trace of human step departed: Because the garden was deserted, The blither place for me!

Friends, blame me not! a narrow ken Hath childhood 'twixt the sun and sward; We draw the moral afterward, We feel the gladness then.

And gladdest hours for me did glide In silence at the rose-tree wall: A thrush made gladness musical Upon the other side.

Nor he nor I did e'er incline To peck or pluck the blossoms white; How should I know but roses might Lead lives as glad as mine?

To make my hermit-home complete, I brought clear water from the spring Praised in its own low murmuring, And cresses glossy wet.

And so, I thought, my likeness grew (Without the melancholy tale) To "gentle hermit of the dale,"

And Angelina too.

For oft I read within my nook Such minstrel stories; till the breeze Made sounds poetic in the trees, And then I shut the book.

If I shut this wherein I write, I hear no more the wind athwart Those trees, nor feel that childish heart Delighting in delight.

My childhood from my life is parted, My footstep from the moss which drew Its fairy circle round: anew The garden is deserted.

Another thrush may there rehea.r.s.e The madrigals which sweetest are; No more for me! myself afar Do sing a sadder verse.

Ah me, ah me! when erst I lay In that child's-nest so greenly wrought, I laughed unto myself and thought "The time will pa.s.s away."

And still I laughed, and did not fear But that, whene'er was pa.s.sed away The childish time, some happier play My womanhood would cheer.

I knew the time would pa.s.s away, And yet, beside the rose-tree wall, Dear G.o.d, how seldom, if at all, Did I look up to pray!

The time is past; and now that grows The cypress high among the trees, And I behold white sepulchres As well as the white rose,--

When graver, meeker thoughts are given, And I have learnt to lift my face, Reminded how earth's greenest place The color draws from heaven,--

It something saith for earthly pain, But more for Heavenly promise free, That I who was, would shrink to be That happy child again.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning [1806-1861]

A FORSAKEN GARDEN

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 Now lie dead.

The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, To the low last edge of the long lone land.

If a step should sound or a word be spoken, Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest's hand?

So long have the gray, bare walks lain guestless, Through branches and briers if a man make way, He shall find no life but the sea-wind's, restless Night and day.

The dense, hard pa.s.sage is blind and stifled That crawls by a track none turn to climb To the strait waste place that the years have rifled Of all but the thorns that are touched not of Time.

The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.

The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, These remain.

Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls not; As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry; From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not, Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.

Over the meadows that blossom and wither Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song; Only the sun and the rain come hither All year long.

The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.

Only the wind here hovers and revels In a round where life seems barren as death.

Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping, Haply, of lovers none ever will know, Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping Years ago.

Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither,"

Did he, whisper? "Look forth from the flowers to the sea; For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither, And men that love lightly may die--but we?"

And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened, And or ever the garden's last petals were shed, In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened, Love was dead.

Or they loved their life through, and then went whither?

And were one to the end--but what end who knows?

Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither, As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.

Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them?

What love was ever as deep as a grave?

They are loveless now as the gra.s.s above them Or the wave.

All are at one now, roses and lovers, Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea.

Not a breath of the time that has been hovers In the air now soft with a summer to be.

Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep, When, as they that are free now of weeping and laughter, We shall sleep.

Here death may deal not again forever; Here change may come not till all change end.

From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, Who have left naught living to ravage and rend.

Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing, While the sun and the rain live, these shall be; Till a last wind's breath, upon all these blowing, Roll the sea.

Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink; Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a G.o.d self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead.

Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909]