The Garden

There’s an ancient, ancient garden

That I see sometimes in dreams

Where the very Maytime sunlight

Plays and glows with spectral gleams;

Where the gaudy-tinted blossoms seem to wither into grey

And the crumbling walls and pillars

Waken thoughts of yesterday

There are vines in nooks and crannies

And there’s moss about the pool

And the tangled ****y thicket

Chokes the arbour dark and cool

In the silent sunken pathways

Springs an herbage sparse and spare

Where the musty scent of dead things

Dulls the fragrance of the air

There is not a living creature in the lonely space around

And the hedge-encompass’d quiet never echoes to a sound

As I walk, and wait, and listen, I will often seek to find

When it was I knew that garden in an age long left behind;

I will oft conjure a vision of a day that is no more

As I gaze upon the grey, grey scenes I feel I knew before

Then a sadness settles o’er me

And a tremor seems to start

For I know the flow’rs are shrivell’d hopes—

The garden is my heart!