Charlotte Becker
"BUT WE DID WALK IN EDEN"
But we did walk in Eden,
Eden, the garden of God;—
There, where no beckoning wonder
Of all the paths we trod,
No choiring sun-filled vineyard,
No voice of stream or bird,
But was some radiant oracle
And flaming with the Word!
Mine ears are dim with voices;
Mine eyes yet strive to see
The black things here to wonder at,
The mirth,—the misery.
Beloved, who wert with me there,
How came these shames to be?—
On what lost star are we?
Men say: The paths of gladness
By men were never trod!—
But we have walked in Eden,
Eden, the garden of God.
Josephine Preston Peabody
A GARDEN-PIECE
Among the flowers of summer-time she stood,
And underneath the films and blossoms shone
Her face, like some pomegranate strangely grown
To ripe magnificence in solitude;
The wanton winds, deft whisperers, had strewed
Her shoulders with her shining hair out blown,
And dyed her breast with many a changing tone
Of silvery green, and all the hues that brood
Among the flowers;
She raised her arm up for her dove to know
That he might preen him on her lovely head;
Then I, unseen, and rising on tiptoe,
Bowed over the rose-barriers, and lo!
Touched not her arm, but kissed her lips instead,
Among the flowers!
Edmund Gosse