THE GARDEN OF LIFE
GOD'S GARDEN
The years are flowers and bloom within
Eternity's wide garden;
The rose for joy, the thorn for sin,
The gardener God, to pardon
All wilding growths, to prune, reclaim,
And make them rose-like in His name.
Richard Burton
"THE LORD GOD PLANTED A GARDEN"
The Lord God planted a garden
In the first white days of the world,
And He set there an angel warden
In a garment of light enfurled.
So near to the peace of Heaven,
That the hawk might nest with the wren,
For there in the cool of the even
God walked with the first of men.
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;
So, in the garden, flower to flower will chime,
And with the music thought and feeling rhyme,
And the hushed soul is with new glory stirred.
Beauty is silent,—through the summer day
Sleeps in her gold,—O wondrous sunlit gold,
Frosting the lilies, virginal array!
Green, full-leaved walls the fragrant sculpture hold,
Warm, orient blooms!—how motionless are they—
Speechless—the eternal loveliness untold!
George E. Woodberry
BARTER
Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.
Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.
Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.
Sara Teasdale
SONNET
Drop me the seed, that I, even in my brain,
May be its nourishing earth. No mortal knows
From what immortal granary comes the grain,
Nor how the earth conspires to make the rose;
But from the dust and from the wetted mud
Comes help, given or taken; so with me
Deep in my brain the essence of my blood
Shall give it stature until Beauty be.
It will look down, even as the burning flower
Smiles upon June, long after I am gone.
Dust-footed Time will never tell its hour,
Through dusty Time its rose will draw men on,
Through dusty Time its beauty shall make plain
Man, and, Without, a spirit scattering grain.
John Masefield
THE TILLING
The dull ox, Sorrow, treads my heart,
Dragging the harrow, Pain,
And turning the old year's tillage
Under the sod again.
So, well do I know the Tiller
Will bring once more the grain;
For grief comes never to the strong—
Nor dull despair's benumbing wrong—
But from them spring a hidden throng
Of seeds, for new life fain.
So heavily do I let the hoofs
Trample the deeps of me;
For only thus is spirit
Brought to fecundity.
But when the ox is stabled
And the harrow set aside,
With calm I watch a new world grow,
Sweetly green, up out of woe,
And, glad of the Tiller, then I know
He too is satisfied.
Cale Young Rice
SAFE
Now shall your beauty never fade;
For it was budding when you passed
Beyond this glare, into the shade
Of fairer gardens unforecast,
Where, by the dreaded Gardener's spade,
Beauty, transplanted once, shall ever last.
Now never shall that glorious breast
Wither, those deft hands lose their art,
Nor those glad shoulders be oppressed
By failing breath or fluttering heart,
Nor, from the cheek by dawn possessed,
The subtle ecstasy of hue depart.
Forever shall you be your best,—
Nay, far more luminously shine
Than when our comradeship was blessed
By what on earth seemed most divine,
Before your body passed to rest
With what I then supposed this heart of mine.
Now shall your bud of beauty blow
Far lovelier than I knew before
When, such a little time ago,
I looked upon your face, and swore
That Helen's never moved men so
When her white, magic hands enkindled war.
As you sweep on from power to power
Shall every earthward thought you think
Irradiate my lonely hour
Till I shall taste the golden drink
Of Life, and see the full-blown flower,
Whose opening bud was mine, beyond the brink.
Robert Haven Schauffler
SORROW IN A GARDEN
Here in this ancient garden
When Winter days had flown
I came, with Comrade Sorrow
To dwell with her alone.
Here in this sweet seclusion
Far from the World's cold stare
What exquisite communings
Sorrow and I would share!
What banquets of remembrance!
What luxury of tears!
With Sorrow in a garden
Through the rose-scented years!
But one day when she called me
I did not hear her voice;
I only heard the lilies
Which sang "Rejoice, rejoice!"
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.
I never can forget her
So intimate were we!
But Sorrow, in my garden
Abides no more with me.
May Riley Smith
MOTH-FLOWERS
The pale moth
Trembles in the white moonlight;
Thus my heart trembles with love!
The rose petals fall—
The red petals of my heart;
Oh, the breath of love!
Cool, sweet tears
Of honey, the jasmine weeps;
Burning fall the tears of love.
Oh, how bitter
Is the White Poppy, Death;
There are no more dreams of love.
Jeanne Robert Foster
ALCHEMY
I lift my heart as spring lifts up
A yellow daisy to the rain;
My heart will be a lovely cup
Altho' it holds but pain.
For I shall learn from flower and leaf
That color every drop they hold,
To change the lifeless wine of grief
To living gold.
Sara Teasdale
FLOWERS IN THE DARK
Late in the evening, when the room had grown
Too hot and tiresome with its flaring light
And noisy voices, I stole out alone
Into the darkness of the summer night.
Down the long garden-walk I slowly went,
A little wind was stirring in the trees;
I only saw the whitest of the flowers,
And I was sorry that the earlier hours
Of that fair evening had been so ill spent,
Because I said, "I am content with these
Dear friends of mine who only speak to me
With their delicious fragrance, and who tell
To me their gracious welcome silently."
The leaves that touch my hand with dew are wet;
I find the tall white lilies I love well.
I linger as I pass the mignonette,
And what surprise could clearer be than this:
To find my sweet rose waiting with a kiss!
Sarah Orne Jewett
WELCOME
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;
Iris whose eyes can tell me more than tongue shall ever say;
They offer to my open arms their bodies soft and slender,
Bringing the best of summer here, they garlanded to-day.
Into my study they have swept, and brasses from Benares,
Vases from Venice they have filled, and hung their wreaths around
The portrait where their mother smiles like the tall tranquil Maries
That Perugino used to paint, with hair like sunlight crowned.
"Mother is coming home to-day." (The words themselves are singing.)
"How long it is," our litany, forgotten, they repeat,
Making their last response to love, their last oblation bringing
Till at the hour of evensong, their voices still more sweet,
Tremble and sanctify the house where happy hearts shall meet.
John Curtis Underwood
THE CHILD IN THE GARDEN
When to the garden of untroubled thought
I came of late, and saw the open door,
And wished again to enter, and explore
The sweet, wild ways with stainless bloom inwrought
And bowers of innocence with beauty fraught,
It seemed some purer voice must speak before
I dared to tread that garden loved of yore,
That Eden lost unknown and found unsought.
Then just within the gate I saw a child,—
A stranger-child, yet to my heart most dear;
He held his hands to me, and softly smiled
With eyes that knew no shade of sin or fear:
"Come in," he said, "and play awhile with me;
I am the little child you used to be."
Henry van Dyke
A WONDER GARDEN
"And a little child shall lead them"
Into her world, beneath her smiling skies;
A little child with wide, wondering eyes
Deep with the mystery that in them lies.
Her soft hand plucks a stem asunder,
And with the dream that is a part
Of Childhood's heart,
She questions:
"Now I want to wonder!"
She "wants to wonder" how so fair a thing
Is born; from what it springs, and why it blooms:
Whence comes its sweet, elusive odor rare,—
The garnered fragrance of a hundred Junes.
Was it all planned,—or just some lovely blunder?
Thus gazing, with the seeking look that lies
In Childhood's eyes,
She questions:
"Now I want to wonder!"
Dear Child, your groping mind seeks far and true:
Mankind and Nature,—all "want to wonder" too.
Frederic A. Whiting
FROM A CAR-WINDOW
Pines, and a blur of lithe young grasses;
Gold in a pool, from the western glow;
Spread of wings where the last thrush passes—
And thoughts of you as the sun dips low.
Quiet lane, and an irised meadow ...
(How many summers have died since then?) ...
I wish you knew how the deepening shadow
Lies on the blue and green again!
Dusk, and the curve of field and hollow
Etched in gray when a star appears:
Sunset,... twilight,... and dark to follow,...
And thoughts of you thro' a mist of tears.
Ruth Guthrie Harding
SONG OF THE WEARY TRAVELLER
I am weary. I would rest
On the wide earth's swelling breast,
Nurtured by the quiet sod
Where the fragrant dew has trod,
Soothed by all the winds that pass,
Hearing voices in the grass
Of the little insect things
Happier than the mightiest kings!
I am weary. I would sleep
In some quiet perfumed deep
Where no human touch could bring
Tears to me or anything.
There I would forget to weep
And my silent cloister keep,—
There I would the earth embrace
Meeting Beauty face to face.
I am weary. I would go
Where the fields are white with snow,
Where the violets are lain
Far from human strife and pain—
Far from longing and delight,
Thro' the endless starry night,
There I would forget to weep,
And my silent cloister keep.
Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff
COBWEBS
Who would not praise thee, miracle of Frost?
Some gesture overnight, some breath benign,
And lo! the tree's a fountain all a-shine,
The hedge a throne of unimagined cost;
In wheel and fan along a wall embossed,
The spider's humble handiwork shows fine
With jewels girdling every airy line;
Though the small mason in the cold be lost.
Web after web, a morning snare of bliss
Starring with beauty the whole neighbourhood,
May well beget an envy clean and good.
When man goes too into the earth-abyss,
And God in His altered garden walks, I would
My secret woof might gleam so fair as this.
Louise Imogen Guiney
BLIND
The Spring blew trumpets of color;
Her Green sang in my brain—
I heard a blind man groping
"Tap—tap" with his cane;
I pitied him his blindness;
But can I boast, "I see?"
Perhaps there walks a spirit
Close by, who pities me,—
A spirit who hears me tapping
The five-sensed cane of mind
Amid such unguessed glories—
That I—am worse than blind!
Harry Kemp
HERB OF GRACE
I do not know what sings in me—
I only know it sings
When pale the stars, and every tree
Is glad with waking wings.
I only know the air is sweet
With wondrous flowers unseen—
That unaccountably complete
Is June's accustomed green.
The wind has magic in its touch;
Strange dreams the sunsets give.
Life I have questioned overmuch—
To-day, I live.
Amelia Josephine Burr
BEFORE MARY OF MAGDALA CAME
Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre.... The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early ... unto the sepulchre.... And ... she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing.... Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him ... Master. St. John.
From silvering mid-sea to the Syrian sand,
It was the time of blossom in the land.
On field and hill and down the steep ravine,
Ran foam and fire of bloom and ripple of green.
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.
The cold gray east was warming into rose
Beyond the steep ravine where Kedron goes.
Now suddenly on the morning faint with flame
Jerusalem with all her clamors came—
A snarl of noises from the far-off street,
Dispute and barter and the clack of feet.
A moment it brawled upward and was gone—
Faded, forgotten in the deep still dawn.
He passed across the morning: felt the cool,
Keen, kindling air blown upward from the pool.
A busy wind brought little tender smells
From barley fields and weeds by April wells.
Up in the tree-tops where the breezes ran
The old sweet noises in the nests began;
And once He paused to listen while a bird
Shouted the joy till all the Garden heard.
There in the morning, on the old worn ways—
New-risen from the sacrament of death—
He looked toward Olivet with tender gaze:
Old things of the heart came back from other days—
The happy, homely shop in Nazareth;
The noonday shadow of a wayside tree
That had befriended Him in Galilee;
Sweet talks in Bethany by the chimney stone,
And night-long lingering talks with John alone.
And then He thought of all the weary men
He would have gathered as a mother hen
Gathers her brood under her wings at night.
And then He saw the ages in one flight,
And heard as a great sea
All of the griefs that had been and must be....
As He stood looking on the endless sky,
Over the Garden went a sobbing cry.
He turned, and saw where the tall almonds are
His Mary of Magdala, wildly pale,
Fast-fleeting down the trail,
And suddenly His face was like a star!
He spoke; she knew—a blaze of happy tears;
Then "Master!" ... and the word rings down the years!
Edwin Markham
CONSCIENCE
Wisdom am I
When thou art but a fool;
My part the man,
When thou hast played the clod;
Hast lost thy garden?
When the eve is cool,
Harken!—'tis I who walk
There with thy God!
Margaret Steele Anderson
ROSA MYSTICA
This rose so exquisite,
So perfect, so complete,
Beauty beyond all price,—
With the hour it dies.
God makes Him roses fast,
With such magnificent haste,
Multitudes, multitudes,
In gardens, fields and woods.
The roses tell His praise
Their little length of days;
Testify to His name,
Gold on gold, flame on flame.
They are scarce here, scarce blown,
But they are gone, are flown;
The gardener's broom must sweep them
And in the darkness heap them.
Drift of rose-leaves upon
The garden-bed, the lawn:
The exquisite thought of God
Is scattered, wasted abroad.
What of the soul of the rose?
It shall not die with those;
It shall wake, shall live again
In God's rose-garden.
It shall climb rose-trellises
Before God's palaces;
The Eternal Rose shall cover
The House of God all over.
She shall breathe out her soul
And yet living, made whole,
Shall offer her oblation
Out of her purest passion.
She shall know all bliss
Where God's garden is:
The rose drinking her fill is
Of joy with her sister lilies.
Where the Water of Life sweet
Bathes her from head to feet,
The River of Life flows—
There is the Rose.
Katharine Tynan
THE MYSTERY
He came and took me by the hand
Up to a red rose tree,
He kept His meaning to Himself
But gave a rose to me.
I did not pray Him to lay bare
The mystery to me,
Enough the rose was Heaven to smell
And His own face to see.
Ralph Hodgson
THE ROSE
And so must life be many-veined;
The loves that hurt, the fate that blent
My life with myriad lives and ways,
The processes that probed and pained,
The pencillings of nights and days—
Cross currents, tangling as they went,
With oh, such conflict in my soul!—
How should I know that they were meant
Just to make living sweet and whole,
Just to unclose
God's perfect rose?
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!
For these I ask not, but neither too late
Nor yet too early, for what men call content,—
And also that something may be sent
To be contented with, I ask of fate.
Edward Thomas (Edward Eastaway)
SAMUEL GARDNER
I who kept the greenhouse,
Lover of trees and flowers,
Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm,
Measuring its generous branches with my eye,
And listened to its rejoicing leaves
Lovingly patting each other
With sweet æolian whispers.
And well they might:
For the roots had grown so wide and deep
That the soil of the hill could not withhold
Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain,
And warmed by the sun;
But yielded it all to the thrifty roots,
Through which it was drawn and whirled to the trunk,
And thence to the branches, and into the leaves,
Wherefrom the breeze took life and sang.
Now I, an under-tenant of the earth, can see
That the branches of a tree
Spread no wider than its roots.
And how shall the soul of a man
Be larger than the life he has lived?
Edgar Lee Masters
SEEDS
What shall we be like when
We cast this earthly body and attain
To immortality?
What shall we be like then?
Ah, who shall say
What vast expansions shall be ours that day?
What transformations of this house of clay,
To fit the heavenly mansions and the light of day?
Ah, who shall say?
But this we know,—
We drop a seed into the ground,
A tiny, shapeless thing, shrivelled and dry,
And, in the fulness of its time, is seen
A form of peerless beauty, robed and crowned
Beyond the pride of any earthly queen,
Instinct with loveliness, and sweet and rare,
The perfect emblem of its Maker's care.
This from a shrivelled seed?—
—Then may man hope indeed!
For man is but the seed of what he shall be,
When, in the fulness of his perfecting,
He drops the husk and cleaves his upward way,
Through earth's retardings and the clinging clay,
Into the sunshine of God's perfect day.
No fetters then! No bonds of time or space!
But powers as ample as the boundless grace
That suffered man, and death, and yet, in tenderness,
Set wide the door, and passed Himself before—
As He had promised—to prepare a place.
Yea, we may hope!
For we are seeds,
Dropped into earth for heavenly blossoming.
Perchance, when comes the time of harvesting,
His loving care
May find some use for even a humble tare.
We know not what we shall be—only this—
That we shall be made like Him—as He is.
John Oxenham
"LORD, I ASK A GARDEN"
Lord, I ask a garden in a quiet spot
where there may be a brook with a good flow,
an humble little house covered with bell-flowers
and a wife and a son who shall resemble Thee.
I should wish to live many years, free from hates,
and make my verses, as the rivers
that moisten the earth, fresh and pure.
Lord, give me a path with trees and birds.
I wish that you would never take my mother,
for I should wish to tend her as a child
and put her to sleep with kisses, when somewhat old
she may need the sun.
R. Arevalo Martinez
MY FLOWER-ROOM
My flower-room is such a little place,
Scarce twenty feet by nine, yet in that space
I have met God; yea, many a radiant hour
Have talked with Him, the All-Embracing Cause,
About His laws.
And he has shown me, in each vine and flower,
Such miracles of power
That day by day this flower-room of mine
Has come to be a shrine.
Fed by the self-same soil and atmosphere,
Pale, tender shoots appear,
Rising to greet the light in that sweet room.
One speeds to crimson bloom,
One slowly creeps to unassuming grace,
One climbs, one trails,
One drinks the light and moisture,
One exhales.
Up through the earth together, stem by stem,
Two plants push swiftly in a floral race,
Till one sends forth a blossom like a gem,
And one gives only fragrance.
In a seed,
So small it scarce is felt within the hand,
Lie hidden such delights
Of scents and sights,
When by the elements of Nature freed,
As paradise must have at its command.
From shapeless roots and ugly bulbous things,
What gorgeous beauty springs!
Such infinite variety appears,
A hundred artists in a hundred years
Could never copy from a floral world
The marvels that in leaf and bud lie curled.
Nor could the most colossal mind of man
Create one little seed of plant or vine
Without assistance from the First Great Plan,
Without the aid divine.
Who but a God
Could draw from light and moisture, heat and cold,
And fashion in earth's mold,
A multitude of blooms to deck one sod?
Who but a God?
Not one man knows
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.
Urn of the sprayless fountain,
Glimmering nymph and faun,
Gleam through the dark-plumed cedar,
Fade on the dusky lawn.
Here is no stir of summer,
Here is no pulse of spring;
Never a bud to burgeon,
Never a bird to sing.
Dreams—and the kingdom of quiet!
Only the dead leaves lie
Over the fallen roses
Under the shrouded sky.
Folded and fenced with silence
Mindless of moil and mart,
It is twilight here in my garden,
And twilight here in my heart.
Rosamund Marriott Watson
THE FRUIT GARDEN PATH
The path runs straight between the flowering rows,
A moonlit path hemmed in by beds of bloom,
Where phlox and marigolds dispute for room
With tall, red dahlias and the briar rose.
'Tis reckless prodigality which throws
Into the night these wafts of rich perfume
Which sweep across the garden like a plume.
Over the trees a single bright star glows.
Dear garden of my childhood, here my years
Have run away like little grains of sand;
The moments of my life, its hopes and fears
Have all found utterance here, where now I stand;
My eyes ache with the weight of unshed tears,
You are my home, do you not understand?
Amy Lowell
WOOD SONG
I heard a woodthrush in the dusk
Twirl three notes and make a star—
My heart that walked with bitterness
Came back from very far.
Three shining notes were all he had,
And yet they made a starry call—
I caught life back against my breast
And kissed it, scars and all.
Sara Teasdale
A PRAYER
Teach me, Father, how to go
Softly as the grasses grow;
Hush my soul to meet the shock
Of the wild world as a rock;
But my spirit, propt with power,
Make as simple as a flower.
Let the dry heart fill its cup,
Like a poppy looking up;
Let life lightly wear her crown,
Like a poppy looking down,
When its heart is filled with dew
And its life begins anew.
Teach me, Father, how to be
Kind and patient as a tree.
Joyfully the crickets croon
Under shady oak at noon;
Beetle, on his mission bent,
Tarries in that cooling tent.
Let me, also, cheer a spot,
Hidden field or garden grot—
Place where passing souls can rest
On the way and be their best.
Edwin Markham
THE PHILOSOPHER'S GARDEN
"See this my garden,
Large and fair!"
—Thus, to his friend,
The Philosopher.
"'Tis not too long,"
His friend replied,
With truth exact,—
"Nor yet too wide.
But well compact,
If somewhat cramped
On every side."
Quick the reply—
"But see how high!—
It reaches up
To God's blue sky!"
John Oxenham