Like fairy lamps ye light the garden bed
With tender ruby glow.
Not any flowers that blow
Can match the glory of your gleaming red;
Such sunny-warm and dreamy hue
Before ye lit your fires no garden ever knew.
Bright are the blossoms of the scarlet sage,
And bright the velvet vest
On the nasturtium's breast;
Bright are the tulips when they reddest rage,
And bright the coreopsis' eye;—
But none of all can with your brilliant beauty vie.
O soft and slumberous flowers, we love you well;
Your glorious crimson tide
The mossy walk beside
Holds all the garden in its drowsy spell;
And walking there we gladly bless
Your queenly grace and all your languorous loveliness.
John Russell Hayes
THE GARDEN IN AUGUST
From corn-crib by the level pasture-lands
To knoll where spruce and boulders hide the road
I know it like a book, and when my heart
Is waste and dry and hard and choked with weeds,
I come here till it gently blooms again.
For gardens yield rich fruits that will outlast
The autumn and the winter of the soul,
Richest to him who toils with loving hands.
'Tis delving thus we learn life's secrets told
But to those favored few who dig for them.
The Garden is an intimate and keeps
In touch with us, yet hath its own high moods,
And doth impose them on the mind of man
To shame his pettiness. So do I love
Its shimmering August mood keyed to the sun,
A harlequin of color, birds and bloom.
Nasturtiums, zinnias, balsams, salvias blaze
By vivid dahlias; tiger-lilies burn
In scarlet shadow of Jerusalem-cross;
Beyond the queen-hydrangeas splendid rule
Barbaric marigolds; chrysanthemums
Outshine gladioli, and sunflowers flaunt
Their crests of gold beneath the giant gourds.
Within the arbor, script forgot, I muse,
While gorgeous hollyhocks sway to and fro
To mark the silences, and butterflies
Flit in and out like some bright memory,
And blinding poppies kindle slow watch-fires
Before the golden altar of the sun.
A spell lies on the Garden. Summer sits
With finger on her lips as if she heard
The steps of Autumn echo on the hill.
A hush lies on the Garden. Summer dreams
Of timid crocus thrust through drifted snow.
Gertrude Huntington McGiffert