“ I only heard the lilies
Which sang "Rejoice, rejoice!"
[Pg 261] The world was gold and azure
The air was sweet with birds;
My garden laughed with rapture
How could I hear her words?
For June was in the garden
And June was in my heart,
And since that hour pale Sorrow
And I have dwelt apart.
But often in the twilight
When birds and gardens sleep
I feel her presence with me
Her arms about me creep.
And when the ghosts of Summer
With the dead roses talk,
I hear her softly sobbing
Along the moonlit walk. ”

“ Angela Morgan FOR THESE
An acre of land between the shore and the hills,
Upon a ledge that shows my Kingdoms three,
The lovely visible earth and sky and sea,
Where what the curlew needs not, the farmer tills:
A house that shall love me as I love it,
Well-hedged, and honoured by a few ash trees
That linnets, greenfinches, and goldfinches
Shall often visit and make love in and flit;
A garden I need never go beyond,
Broken but neat, whose sunflowers every one
Are fit to be the sign of the Rising Sun:
A spring, a brook's bend, or at least a pond! ”

“ HER GARDEN
This friendly garden, with its fragrant roses,—
It was not ours, when she was here below;
And so, in that low bed where she reposes,
The beauty of it all she cannot know.
But in the evening when the birds are calling
The fragrance rises like a breath of myrrh,
And in my empty heart, benignly falling,
Becomes a little prayer to send to her.
So, in that silent, lonely bed that holds her,
Where nevermore the shadows rise or flee,
I think a dream of radiant spring enfolds her—
Of bloom and bird and bending bough ... and me. ”

“ Just why the bloom and fragrance of the rose,
Or how its tints were blent;
Or why the white camellia, without scent,
Up through the same soil grows;
Or how the daisy and the violet
And blades of grass first on wild meadows met.
Not one, not one man knows,
The wisest but suppose.
This flower-room of mine
Has come to be a shrine,
And I go hence
Each day with larger faith and reverence.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox "VESTURED AND VEILED WITH TWILIGHT"
Vestured and veiled with twilight,
Lulled in the winter's ease,
Dim, and happy, and silent,
My garden dreams by its trees. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The dance of the dew on the wings of a moonbeam,
The voice of the zephyr that sings as he goes,
The hope of a bride or the dream of a maiden
Watching the petals of gladness unclose?
Springtime, O Springtime, what is your secret,
The bliss at the core of your magical mirth,
That quickens the pulse of the morning to wonder
And hastens the seeds of all beauty to birth,
That captures the heavens and conquers to blossom
The roots of delight in the heart of the earth?
Sarojini Naidu SPRING
At the first hour, it was as if one said, "Arise." ”

“ Ran foam and fire of bloom and ripple of green.
[Pg 271] The Sepulchre was open wide, and thrown
Among the crushed, hurt lilies lay the Stone.
A light wind stirred the Garden: everywhere
The smell of myrrh was out upon the air.
For three days He had traveled with the dead,
And now was risen to go with stiller tread
The old earth ways again,
To stay the heart and build the hope of men.
He made a luster in that leafy place,
His form serene, majestical; His face
Touched with a cryptic beauty like the sea
Lit by the moon when night begins to be. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Vachel Lindsay "MY SOUL IS LIKE A GARDEN-CLOSE"
My soul is like a garden-close
Where marjoram and lilac grow,
Where soft the scent of long ago
Over the border lightly blows.
[Pg 129] Where sometimes homing winds at play
Bear the faint fragrance of a rose—
My soul is like a garden-close
Because you chanced to pass my way.
Thomas S. Jones, Jr. A DREAM
I dreamed a dream of roses somewhere breathing
Their sweet souls out upon the summer night:
The flowers I saw not, but their fragrance wreathing
Like clouds of incense filled me with delight. ”

“ There is a hillside garden that their tender hands have tended,
Below a house that holds for me a shrine of joy and light.
And there beneath a cloudless sun when June is warm and splendid
I see them coming home to me, three girls in garments white.
Alice with lilies in her hands, and little dark Dolores
Showing her glowing marigolds; and Iris last of all
Under the arbor by the wall of purple morning-glories,
Bringing my crimson ramblers back that sought to scale the wall.
Alice with smiles along her lips; Dolores still and tender ”

“ And I dream that these garden-closes
With their shade and their sun-flecked sod
And their lilies and bowers of roses,
Were laid by the hand of God.
The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,—
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
Dorothy Frances Gurney THE LILIES
Ever the garden has a spiritual word:
In the slow lapses of unnoticed time
It drops from heaven, or upward learns to climb,
Breathing an earthly sweetness, as a bird
Is in the porches of the morning heard ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ George Edward Woodberry
[Pg 121]
"WHERE LOVE IS LIFE"
Where love is life
The roses blow,
Though winds be rude
And cold the snow,
The roses climb
Serenely slow,
They nod in rhyme
We know—we know
Where love is life
The roses blow.
Where life is love
The roses blow,
Though care be quick
And sorrows grow,
Their roots are twined
With rose-roots so
That rosebuds find
A way to show
Where life is love
The roses blow.
Duncan Campbell Scott
[Pg 122]
THE TIME OF ROSES
Love, it is the time of roses!
In bright fields and garden-closes
How they burgeon and unfold! ”

“ Still my heart can hide there, still my eyes can dream it,
Though the long years lie between and I am far away;
When the world is hard now, when the city's clanging
Tires my eyes and tires my heart and dust lies everywhere,
I can dream the peace still of the soft wind's blowing,
I can be a child still and hide my heart from care.
Lord, if still that garden blossoms in the sunlight,
Grant that children laugh there now among its green and gold—
Grant that little hearts still hide its memoried sweetness,
Locking one bright dream away for light when they are old! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The currants are like jewelled fairy-bowers;
A dazzling insect worries the heart of a rose,
Where a delicate fern a filmy shadow throws,
And airy as bubbles the thousands of bees
Over the young grape-clusters swarm as they please.
The air is pearly, iridescent, pure;
These profound and radiant noons mature,
[Pg 45] Unfolding even as odorous roses of clear light;
Familiar roads to distances invite
Like slow and graceful gestures, one by one
Bound for the pearly-hued horizon and the sun.
Surely the summer clothes, with all her arts,
No other garden with such grace and power ”

“ Pulsing and breathing, rocked with delicate gales,—
You gleam as a dream, by my window's light,
My white moth, my bright moth, my wandering wraith of night.
From the velvet screening of a great gray cloud
The moon floats swiftly, white and open-browed,
Flooding cloud and water with her shining trail,
Till the night shrinks, sighing, behind the radiant veil;
The night, with her shy soul, to the deep wood slips—
Her shy soul, her high soul, shrine of all the stars;
And you fly, like the sigh from her tender lips,
Athwart the wavering shadows, beating the silver bars ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the brimming cups of dew,
You can hear their golden laughter
All the garden through.
Clinton Scollard THE END OF SUMMER
When poppies in the garden bleed,
And coreopsis goes to seed,
And pansies, blossoming past their prime,
Grow small and smaller all the time,
When on the mown field, shrunk and dry,
Brown dock and purple thistle lie,
And smoke from forest fires at noon
Can make the sun appear the moon,
When apple seeds, all white before,
Begin to darken in the core,
I know that summer, scarcely here,
Is gone until another year. ”

“ Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)
And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland;
Come down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!) .
Alfred Noyes BEYOND
I wonder if the tides of Spring
Will always bring me back again
Mute rapture at the simple thing
Of lilacs blowing in the rain.
If so, my heart will ever be
Above all fear, for I shall know
There is a greater mystery
Beyond the time when lilacs blow.
Thomas S. Jones, Jr. JUNE
I knew that you were coming, June, I knew that you were coming! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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
[Pg 185]
"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! ”

“ For there a fair and sweet old-fashioned country garden lies.
The gray old mansion down beside the lane
Stands knee-deep in the fields that lie around
And scent the air with hay and ripening grain.
Behind the manse box-hedges mark the bound
And close the garden in, or nearly close,
For on beyond the hollyhocks an olden orchard grows.
[Pg 84] So bright and lovely is the dear old place,
It seems as though the country's very heart
Were centered here, and that its antique grace
Must ever hold it from the world apart. ”