Time’s Garden
YEARS are the seedlings which we careless sow
In Time’s bare garden. Dead they seem to be—
Dead years! We sigh and cover them with mould,
But though the vagrant wind blow hot, blow cold,
No hint of life beneath the dust we see;
Then comes the magic hour when we are old,
And lo! they stir and blossom wondrously.
Strange spectral blooms in spectral plots aglow!
Here a great rose and here a ragged tare;
And here pale, scentless blossoms without name,
Robbed to enrich this poppy formed of flame;
Here springs some hearts’ease, scattered unaware;
Here, hawthorn-bloom to show the way Love came;
Here, asphodel, to image Love’s despair!
When I am old and master of the spell
To raise these garden ghosts of memory,
My feet will turn aside from common ways,
Where common flowers mark the common days,
To one green plot; and there I know will be
Fairest of all (O perfect beyond praise!)
The year you gave, beloved, your rosemary.
The Coming of Love
HOW shall I know? Shall I hear Love pass
In the wind that sighs through the poplar tree?
Shall I follow his passing over the grass
By the prisoned scents which his footsteps free?
Shall I wake one day to a sky all blue
And meet with Spring in a crowded street?
Shall I open a door and, looking through,
Find, on a sudden, the world more sweet?
How shall I know?—last night I lay
Counting the hours’ dreary sum
With naught in my heart save a wild dismay
And a fear that whispered, “Love is come!”