And in the season of perfect and frailest beauty,
Pear-blossom broke and the lilacs' waxen cones,
And a tranced laburnum trailing its veils of yellow
Tenderly drooped over the ivied stones.
The lilacs browned, a breath dried the laburnum,
The swollen peonies scattered the earth with blood,
And the rhododendrons shed their sumptuous mantles,
And the marshalled irises unsceptred stood.
And the borders filled with daisies and pied sweet-williams
And busy pansies; and there as we gazed and dreamed,
And breathed the swooning smell of the packed carnations,
The present was always the crown of all: it seemed
Each month more beautiful sprang from a robe discarded,
The year all effortless dropt the best away
And struck the heart with loveliness new, more lavish;
When the clambering rose had blown and died, by day
The broad-leaved tapering many-shielded hollyhocks
Stood like pillars and shone to the August sun,
The glimmering cups of waking evening primroses
Filled the dusk now the scent of the rose was done.
*****
A wall there was and a door to the rose-garden,
And out of that a gate to the orchard led,
And there was the last hedge, and the turf sloped upward
Till the sky was cut by the hill's line overhead.
And thither at times we climbed, and far below us
That world that had made the world remote was seen,
Small, a huddle of russet roofs and chimneys,
And its guard of elms like bushes against the green:
One spot in the country, little and mild and homely,
The nearest house of a wide, populous plain....
But down at evening under the stars and the branches
In the whispering garden we lost the world again.
*****