Of the old house, only a few crumbled
Courses of brick, smothered in nettle and dock,
Or a squared stone, lying mossy where it tumbled!
Sprawling bramble and saucy thistle mock
What once was firelit floor and private charm
Where, seen in a windowed picture, hills were fading
At dusk, and all was memory-coloured and warm,
And voices talked, secure from the wind's invading.
Of the old garden, only a stray shining
Of daffodil flames amid April's cuckoo-flowers,
Or a cluster of aconite mixt with weeds entwining!
But, dark and lofty, a royal cedar towers
By homely thorns: whether the white rain drifts
Or sun scorches, he holds the downs in ken,
The western vale; his branchy tiers he lifts,
Older than many a generation of men.
_Alfred Douglas_
Lord Alfred Douglas was born in 1870 and educated at Magdalen College,
Oxford. He was the editor of _The Academy_ from 1907 to 1910 and was
at one time the intimate friend of Oscar Wilde. One of the minor
poets of "the eighteen-nineties," several of his poems rise above his
own affectations and the end-of-the-century decadence. _The City of
the Soul_ (1899) and _Sonnets_ (1900) contain his most graceful
writing.