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!
MARGARET WIDDEMER
TO THE SWEETWILLIAM
I search the poet's honied lines,
And not in vain, for columbines;
And not in vain for other flowers
That sanctify the many bowers
Unsanctified by human souls.
See where the larkspur lifts among
The thousand blossoms finely sung,
Still blossoming in the fragrant scrolls!
Charity, eglantine, and rue
And love-in-a-mist are all in view,
With coloured cousins; but where are you,
Sweetwilliam?
The lily and the rose have books
Devoted to their lovely looks,
And wit has fallen in vital showers
Through England's most miraculous hours
To keep them fresh a thousand years.
The immortal library can show
The violet's well-thumbed folio
Stained tenderly by girls in tears.
The shelf where Genius stands in view
Has brier and daffodil and rue
And love-lies-bleeding; but not you,
Sweetwilliam.
Thus, if I seek the classic line
For marybuds, 'tis, Shakespeare, thine!
And ever is the primrose born
'Neath Goldsmith's overhanging thorn.
In Herrick's breastknot I can see
The apple-blossom, fresh and fair
As when he plucked and put it there,
Heedless of Time's anthology.
So flower by flower comes into view
Kept fadeless by the Olympian dew
For startled eyes; and yet not you,
Sweetwilliam.
* * * * *
Though gods of song have let you be,
Bloom in my little book for me.
Unwont to stoop or lean, you show
An undefeated heart, and grow
As pluckily as cedars. Heat
And cold, and winds that make
Tumbledown sallies, cannot shake
Your resolution to be sweet.
Then take this song, be it born to die
Ere yet the unwedded butterfly
Has glimpsed a darling in the sky,
Sweetwilliam!
NORMAN GALE
ROSE-GERANIUM
A pungent spray of rose-geranium--
A breath of the old life.
It brings up the little five-room cottage where I was born,
And where I grew through a smiling childhood.
The white-bearded grandfather sits in his mended rocking-chair,
His eyes far off, crooning "The Sweet By and By,"
Marked with the tapping of his toe upon the weathered porch-floor,
While the sunshine drizzles through the great oaks.
And there is my grandmother's kneeling figure,
Turning over the rich black earth with her trowel;
And the kind wrinkles on her face, as she says:
"Didn't the pansies do finely this year, Clem?
And the scarlet verbenas, and the larkspurs,
And the row of flaming salvia....
Those roses ... they're Marechal Niels ... my favorites.
And little grandson, smell this spray of rose-geranium--
Just think, when grandmother was a little tiny girl
Her grandmother grew them in her yard!"
CLEMENT WOOD
FOUR O'CLOCKS
It is mid-afternoon. Long, long ago
Each morning-glory sheathed the slender horn
It blew so gayly on the hills of morn,
And fainted in the noontide's fervid glow.
Gone are the dew-drops from the rose's heart--
Gone with the freshness of the early hours,
The songs that filled the air with silver showers,
The lovely dreams that were of morn a part.
Yet still in tender light the garden lies;
The warm, sweet winds are whispering soft and low;
Brown bees and butterflies flit to and fro;
The peace of heaven is in the o'erarching skies.
And here be four-o'clocks, just opening wide
Their many colored petals to the sun,
As glad to live as if the evening dun
Were far away, and morning had not died!
JULIA C. R. DORR
ASKING FOR ROSES
A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
With doors that none but the wind ever closes,
Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.
I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;
"I wonder," I say, "who the owner of those is."
"Oh, no one you know," she answers me airy,
"But one we must ask if we want any roses."
So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly
There in the hush of the wood that reposes,
And turn and go up to the open door boldly,
And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.
"Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?"
'Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.
"Pray are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!
'Tis summer again; there's two come for roses.
"A word with you, that of the singer recalling--
Old Herrick: a saying that every man knows is
A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,
And nothing is gained by not gathering roses."
We do not loosen our hands' intertwining
(Not caring so very much what she supposes),
There when she comes on us mistily shining
And grants us by silence the boon of her roses.
ROBERT FROST
THE OLD BROCADE
In a black oak chest all carven,
We found it laid,
Still faintly sweet of Lavender,
An old brocade.
With that perfume came a vision,
A garden fair,
Enclosed by great yew hedges;
A Lady there,
Is culling fresh blown lavender,
And singing goes
Up and down the alleys green--
A human rose.
The sun glints on her auburn hair
And brightens, too,
The silver buckles that adorn
Each little shoe.
Her 'kerchief and her elbow sleeves
Are cobweb lace;
Her gown, it is our old brocade,
Worn with a grace.
Methinks I hear its soft frou-frou,
And see the sheen
Of its dainty pink moss-rose buds,
Their leaves soft green,
On a ground of palest shell pink,
In garlands laid;
But long dead the Rose who wore it--
The old brocade.
M. G. BRERETON
STAIRWAYS AND GARDENS
Gardens and Stairways; those are words that thrill me
Always with vague suggestions of delight.
Stairways and Gardens. Mystery and grace
Seem part of their environment; they fill all space
With memories of things veiled from my sight
In some far place.
Gardens. The word is overcharged with meaning;
It speaks of moonlight, and a closing door;
Of birds at dawn--of sultry afternoons.
Gardens. I seem to see low branches screening
A vine-roofed arbor with a leaf-tiled floor
Where sunlight swoons.
Stairways. The word winds upward to a landing,
Then curves and vanishes in space above.
Lights fall, lights rise; soft lights that meet and blend.
Stairways; and some one at the bottom standing
Expectantly with lifted looks of love.
Then steps descend.
Gardens and Stairways. They belong with song--
With subtle scents of perfume, myrrh and musk--
With dawn and dusk--with youth, romance, and mystery,
And times that were and times that are to be.
Stairways and Gardens.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
OLD MOTHERS
I love old mothers--mothers with white hair,
And kindly eyes, and lips grown softly sweet
With murmured blessings over sleeping babes.
There is a something in their quiet grace
That speaks the calm of Sabbath afternoons;
A knowledge in their deep, unfaltering eyes
That far outreaches all philosophy.
Time, with caressing touch, about them weaves
The silver-threaded fairy-shawl of age,
While all the echoes of forgotten songs
Seem joined to lend a sweetness to their speech.
Old mothers!--as they pace with slow-timed step,
Their trembling hands cling gently to youth's strength;
Sweet mothers!--as they pass, one sees again
Old garden-walks, old roses, and old loves.
CHARLES ROSS
PASTURES AND HILLSIDES
SONG FROM "APRIL"
_I know
Where the wind flowers blow!
I know,
I have been
Where the wild honey bees
Gather honey for their queen!_
_I would be
A wild flower,
Blue sky over me,
For an hour ... an hour!
So the wild bees
Should seek and discover me,
And kiss me ... kiss me ... kiss me!
Not one of the dusky dears should miss me!_
_I know
Where the wind flowers blow!
I know,
I have been
Where the little rabbits run
In the warm, yellow sun!_
_Oh, to be a wild flower
For an hour ... an hour ...
In the heather!
A bright flower, a wild flower,
Blown by the weather!_
_I know,
I have been
Where the wild honey bees
Gather Honey for their queen!_
IRENE RUTHERFORD MCLEOD
THE ROAD TO THE POOL
I know a road that leads from town,
A pale road in a Watteau gown
Of wild-rose sprays, that runs away
All fragrant-sandaled, slim and gray.
It slips along the laurel grove
And down the hill, intent to rove,
And crooks an arm of shadow cool
Around a willow-silvered pool.
I never travel very far
Beyond the pool where willows are:
There is a shy and native grace
That hovers all about the place,
And resting there I hardly know
Just where it was I meant to go,
Contented like the road that dozes
In panniered gown of briar roses.
GRACE HAZARD CONKLING
THE WILD ROSE
Summer has crossed the fields, and where she trod
Violets bloom; the dancing wind-flowers nod,
And daisies blossom all across the sod.
She passed the brook, and in their glad surprise
The first forget-me-nots smiled at the skies
And caught the very color of her eyes.
But, sleeping in the meadow-land, she pressed
The dear wild rose so closely to her breast
It stole her heart--and so she loves it best.
CHARLES BUXTON GOING
UP A HILL AND A HILL
Up a hill and a hill there's a sudden orchard-slope,
And a little tawny field in the sun;
There's a gray wall that coils like a twist of frayed-out rope,
And grasses nodding news one to one.
Up a hill and a hill there's a windy place to stand,
And between the apple-boughs to find the blue
Of the sleepy summer sea, past the cliffs of orange sand,
With the white charmed ships sliding through.
Up a hill and a hill there's a little house as gray
As a stone that the glaciers scored and stained;
With a red rose by the door, and a tangled garden-way,
And a face at the window, checker-paned.
I could climb, I could climb, till the shoes fell off my feet,
Just to find that tawny field above the sea!
Up a hill and a hill,--oh, the honeysuckle's sweet!
And the eyes at the window watch for me!
FANNIE STEARNS DAVIS
THE JOYS OF A SUMMER MORNING
The smell of the morning that lurks in the hay,
The swish of the scythe
And the roundelay
Of the meadow-lark as he wings away,
Are the joys of a summer morning.
The daisy's bloom on the meadow's breast,
The wandering bee
And his ceaseless quest
Of the tempting sweets in the clover's crest,
Are the joys of a summer morning.
The lowing kine on a distant hill,
The rollicking fall
Of the near-by rill
And the lazy drone of the ancient mill,
Are the joys of a summer morning.
The feathery clouds in a faultless sky,
The new-risen sun
With its kindly eye
And the woodland breezes floating by,
Are the joys of a summer morning.
HENRY A. WISE WOOD
SOUTH WIND
Where have you been, South Wind, this May-day morning,
With larks aloft, or skimming with the swallow,
Or with blackbirds in a green, sun-glinted thicket?
Oh, I heard you like a tyrant in the valley;
Your ruffian hosts shook the young, blossoming orchards;
You clapped rude hands, hallooing round the chimney,
And white your pennons streamed along the river.
You have robbed the bee, South Wind, in your adventure,
Blustering with gentle flowers; but I forgave you
When you stole to me shyly with scent of hawthorn.
SIEGFRIED SASSOON
TO A WEED
You bold thing! thrusting 'neath the very nose
Of her fastidious majesty, the rose,
Even in the best ordained garden bed,
Unauthorized, your smiling little head!
The gardener, mind! will come in his big boots,
And drag you up by your rebellious roots,
And cast you forth to shrivel in the sun,
Your daring quelled, your little weed's life done.
And when the noon cools, and the sun drops low,
He'll come again with his big wheelbarrow,
And trundle you--I don't know clearly where,
But off, outside the dew, the light, the air.
Meantime--ah, yes! the air is very blue,
And gold the light, and diamond the dew,--
You laugh and courtesy in your worthless way,
And you are gay, ah, so exceeding gay!
You argue in your manner of a weed,
You did not make yourself grow from a seed,
You fancy you've a claim to standing-room,
You dream yourself a right to breathe and bloom.
The sun loves you, you think, just as the rose,
He never scorned you for a weed,--he knows!
The green-gold flies rest on you and are glad,
It's only cross old gardeners find you bad.
You know, you weed, I quite agree with you,
I am a weed myself, and I laugh too,--
Both, just as long as we can shun his eye,
Let's sniff at the old gardener trudging by!
GERTRUDE HALL
THE PASTURE
I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long.--You come too.
I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long.--You come too.
ROBERT FROST
THE THISTLE
Ha, prickle-armed knight,
How oft the world hath cursed thee,
Thou pestilence of Earth,
The beldame who hath nursed thee!
Hath hellish Proserpine
Her needs lent to arm thee
That mischief-loving gods,
Pricked sorely, may not harm thee?
Or hath the mirthful Love
Presented thee his pinions
To dress thy tiny seeds,
The curse of man's dominions!
Thou like a maiden art
Who best can find protection
Employed at needlework
From idleness' infection.
And like a prude thou art
When he who loves embraces;
Thou dost repel with thorns
And she with sharper phrases.
And like the wraith thou art
Wherewith my heart is haunted;
Ye both take most delight
Where ye the least are wanted.
MILES M. DAWSON
CLOVER
Little masters, hat in hand,
Let me in your presence stand,
Till your silence solve for me
This your threefold mystery.
Tell me--for I long to know--
How, in darkness there below,
Was your fairy fabric spun,
Spread and fashioned, three in one.
Did your gossips gold and blue,
Sky and Sunshine, choose for you,
Ere your triple forms were seen,
Suited liveries of green?
Can ye--if ye dwelt indeed
Captives of a prison seed--
Like the Genie, once again
Get you back into the grain?
Little masters, may I stand
In your presence, hat in hand,
Waiting till you solve for me
This your threefold mystery?
JOHN B. TABB
WILD GARDENS
On the ripened grass is a bloomy mist
Of silver and rose and amethyst
Where the long June wave has run.
There are glints of copper and tarnished brass,
And hyacinthine flames that pass
From the green fires of the sun.
This web of a thousand gleams and glows
Was woven silently out of the snows
And the patient shine and rain.
It was fashioned cunningly day by day
From the silken spear to the pollened spray
With its folded sheaths of grain.
Oh, garden of grasses deep and wild,
So dear to the vagrant and the child
And the singer of an hour.
To the wayworn soul you give your balm,
Your cup of peace, your stringed psalm,
Your grace of bud and flower.
ADA FOSTER MURRAY
THE DANDELION
O dandelion, rich and haughty,
King of village flowers!
Each day is coronation time,
You have no humble hours.
I like to see you bring a troop
To beat the blue-grass spears,
To scorn the lawn-mower that would be
Like fate's triumphant shears.
Your yellow heads are cut away,
It seems your reign is o'er.
By noon you raise a sea of stars
More golden than before.
VACHEL LINDSAY
JOE-PYEWEED
And the name brings back those kindly hills
And the drowsing life so new to me;
And the welcome that those purple blossoms
With their tiny trumpets blew to me.
Stout and tall, they raised their clustered heads,
Leaping, as a lusty fellow would,
Through the lowlands, down the twisting cow-paths;
Running past the green and yellow wood.
How they come again--those rambling roads;
And the weeds' wild jewels glowing there.
Richer than a Paradise of flowers
Was that bit of pasture growing there.
Weeds--the very names call up those faint
Half-forgotten smells and cries again ...
Weeds--like some old charm, I say them over,
And the rolling Berkshires rise again:
_Basil, Boneset, Toadflax, Tansy,
Weeds of every form and fancy;
Milk-weed, Mullein, Loose-strife, Jewel-weed,
Mustard, Thimble-weed, Tear-thumb (a cruel weed).
Clovers in all sorts--Nonesuch, Melilot;
Staring Buttercups, a bold and yellow lot.
Daisies rioting about the place
With Black-eyed Susan and Queen Anne's Lace...._
Names--they blossom into colored hills;
Hills whose rousing beauty flows to me ...
And with all its soundless, purple trumpets,
Lo, the Joe-Pyeweed still blows to me!
LOUIS UNTERMEYER
TO A DAISY
Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide
Like all created things, secrets from me,
And stand a barrier to eternity.
And I, how can I praise thee well and wide
From where I dwell--upon the hither side?
Thou little veil for so great mystery,
When shall I penetrate all things and thee,
And then look back? For this I must abide,
Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled
Literally between me and the world.
Then I shall drink from in beneath a spring,
And from a poet's side shall read his book.
O daisy mine, what will it be to look
From God's side even of such a simple thing?
ALICE MEYNELL
A SOFT DAY
A soft day, thank God!
A wind from the south
With a honeyed mouth;
A scent of drenching leaves,
Briar and beech and lime,
White elder-flower and thyme
And the soaking grass smells sweet,
Crushed by my two bare feet,
While the rain drips,
Drips, drips, drips from the eaves.
A soft day, thank God!
The hills wear a shroud
Of silver cloud;
The web the spider weaves
Is a glittering net;
The woodland path is wet,
And the soaking earth smells sweet
Under my two bare feet,
And the rain drips,
Drips, drips, drips from the eaves.
W. M. LETTS
ARBUTUS
Not Spring's
Thou art, but hers,
Most cool, most virginal,
Winter's, with thy faint breath, thy snows
Rose-tinged.
ADELAIDE CRAPSEY
JEWEL-WEED
Thou lonely, dew-wet mountain road,
Traversed by toiling feet each day,
What rare enchantment maketh thee
Appear so gay?
Thy sentinels, on either hand
Rise tamarack, birch, and balsam-fir,
O'er the familiar shrubs that greet
The wayfarer;
But here's a magic cometh new--
A joy to gladden thee, indeed:
This passionate out-flowering of
The jewel-weed,
That now, when days are growing drear,
As Summer dreams that she is old,
Hangs out a myriad pleasure-bells
Of mottled gold!
Thine only, these, thou lonely road!
Though hands that take, and naught restore,
Rob thee of other treasured things,
Thine these are, for
A fairy, cradled in each bloom,
To all who pass the charmed spot
Whispers in warning: "Friend, admire,--
But touch me not!
"Leave me to blossom where I sprung,
A joy untarnished shall I seem;
Pluck me, and you dispel the charm
And blur the dream!"
FLORENCE EARLE COATES
THE WALL
"_Something there is that doesn't like a wall._" (ROBERT FROST)
"Not like a wall?"
I sit above the meadow in the glowing fall
Tracing the grey redoubt from square to square
Which bound the acres harvest-ripe and fair,--
And wonder if it's true?
Nay, ask the sumac and the teeming vine,
That lean upon the boulders,
The crimsoning ivy and the wild woodbine
Whose eager fingers clutch the stony shoulders,
The golden rod, the aster and the rue.
Ask the red squirrel with the chubby cheek
Skipping from stone to stone
By a quick route, his hidden hoard to seek,
Making the little viaduct his own.
Look where the woodchuck lifts a cautious head
Between the rocks close by the cabbage bed;
The honey-bees have built a secret hive
In a forgotten chink;
And there a grey cocoon is tucked away
Shrouding a miracle in mauve and pink
To wait its Easter day.
The wall with pageantry is all alive!
And I who gaze
On the dark border here,
Drawn like a ribbon round the pasture-ways,
Embroidered with the glory of the year,--
Do I not like the wall?
Lo, I remember how in days of old
My grandsire toiled with weariness and pain
To dig the cumbering boulders from the mould;
Piled them in ordered rows again,
Fitting them firm and fast,
A monument to last
Long after his own harried day was past.
He cleared the rocky soil for corn and grain
By which his children throve
To carry on the race.
We live by his life-giving.
I see each stone, rough like his granite face,--
Uncompromising, stern, no slave to love,
Dowered with little grace,
Grim with the hard, unjoyful task of living,
But strong to stand the wrath of storm and time,
And bolts that heaven let fall.
Built of a patriot's prime,--
I love the wall!
ABBIE FARWELL BROWN
BOULDERS
There is a look of wisdom in yon stones,
Great boulders basking in the noonday heat,
Their grimness lightened by a fringe of sweet
Fresh fern or moss or green-gray lichen tones.
While through the glade an insect army drones
And birds from neighboring boughs their notes repeat,
These patriarchs, drowsing as in bliss complete,
Rest on the flowery sward their tranquil bones.
A thousand or ten thousand years ago,
Shattered by frost, or by the torrent's might,
These boulders hurtled from some toppling height
And crashed through forests to the plain below.
Now, reconciled to Nature's gentler mood,
They lie on lowly earth and find it good.
CHARLES WHARTON STORK
AFTERNOON ON A HILL
I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun;
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one;
I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes;
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise;
And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down.
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
THE GOLDEN-ROD
O Rod of gold!
O swaying sceptre of the year--
Now frost and cold
Show Winter near,
And shivering leaves grow brown and sere.
The bleak hillside,
And marshy waste of yellow reeds,
And meadows wide
Where frosted weeds
Shake on the damp wind light-winged seeds,
Are decked with thee,--
The lingering Summer's latest grace,
And sovereignty.
Each wind-swept space
Waves thy red gold in Winter's face--
He strives each star,
In stormy pride to lay full low;
But when thy bar
Resists his blow,
Will crown thee with a puff of snow!
MARGARET DELAND
THE PATH THAT LEADS TO NOWHERE
There's a path that leads to nowhere
In a meadow that I know,
Where an inland island rises
And the stream is still and slow;
There it wanders under willows
And beneath the silver green
Of the birches' silent shadows
Where the early violets lean.
Other pathways lead to Somewhere,
But the one I love so well
Had no end and no beginning--
Just the beauty of the dell,
Just the windflowers and the lilies,
Yellow striped as adder's tongue
Seem to satisfy my pathway
As it winds their sweets among.
There I go to meet the Spring-time,
When the meadow is aglow,
Marigolds amid the marshes,--
And the stream is still and slow.--
There I find my fair oasis,
And with care-free feet I tread
For the pathway leads to nowhere,
And the blue is overhead!
All the ways that lead to Somewhere
Echo with the hurrying feet
Of the Struggling and the Striving,
But the way I find so sweet
Bids me dream and bids me linger,
Joy and Beauty are its goal,--
On the path that leads to nowhere
I have sometimes found my soul!
CORINNE ROOSEVELT ROBINSON
LOVERS AND ROSES
THE MESSAGE
_So fair the world about me lies,
So pure is heaven above,
Ere so much beauty dies
I would give a gift to my love;
Now, ere the long day close,
That has been so full of bliss,
I will send to my love the rose,
In its leaves I will shut a kiss;
A rose in the night to perish,
A kiss through life to cherish;
Now, ere the night-wind blows,
I will send unto her the rose._
GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY
"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
THE TIME OF ROSES
Love, it is the time of roses!
In bright fields and garden-closes
How they burgeon and unfold!
How they sweep o'er tombs and towers
In voluptuous crimson showers
And untrammelled tides of gold!
How they lure wild bees to capture
All the rich mellifluous rapture
Of their magical perfume,
And to passing winds surrender
And their frail and dazzling splendor
Rivalling your turban-plume!
How they cleave the air adorning
The high rivers of the morning
In a blithe, bejewelled fleet!
How they deck the moonlit grasses
In thick rainbow tinted masses
Like a fair queen's bridal sheet!
Hide me in a shrine of roses,
Drown me in a wine of roses
Drawn from every fragrant grove!
Bind me on a pyre of roses,
Burn me in a fire of roses,
Crown me with the rose of Love!
SAROJINI NAIDU
LOVE PLANTED A ROSE