Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 18061861679. The Deserted Garden
I MIND me in the days departed, | |
How often underneath the sun | |
With childish bounds I used to run | |
To a garden long deserted. | |
The beds and walks were vanish’d quite; | 5 |
And wheresoe’er had struck the spade, | |
The greenest grasses Nature laid, | |
To sanctify her right. | |
I call’d the place my wilderness, | |
For no one enter’d there but I. | 10 |
The sheep look’d in, the grass to espy, | |
And pass’d it ne’ertheless. | |
The trees were interwoven wild, | |
And spread their boughs enough about | |
To keep both sheep and shepherd out, | 15 |
But not a happy child. | |
Adventurous joy it was for me! | |
I crept beneath the boughs, and found | |
A circle smooth of mossy ground | |
Beneath a poplar-tree. | 20 |
Old garden rose-trees hedged it in, | |
Bedropt with roses waxen-white, | |
Well satisfied with dew and light, | |
And careless to be seen. | |
Long years ago, it might befall, | 25 |
When all the garden flowers were trim, | |
The grave old gardener prided him | |
On these the most of all. | |
Some Lady, stately overmuch, | |
Here moving with a silken noise, | 30 |
Has blush’d beside them at the voice | |
That liken’d her to such. | |
Or these, to make a diadem, | |
She often may have pluck’d and twined; | |
Half-smiling as it came to mind, | 35 |
That few would look at them. | |
O, little thought that Lady proud, | |
A child would watch her fair white rose, | |
When buried lay her whiter brows, | |
And silk was changed for shroud!— | 40 |
Nor thought that gardener (full of scorns | |
For men unlearn’d and simple phrase) | |
A child would bring it all its praise, | |
By creeping through the thorns! | |
To me upon my low moss seat, | 45 |
Though never a dream the roses sent | |
Of science or love’s compliment, | |
I ween they smelt as sweet. | |
It did not move my grief to see | |
The trace of human step departed: | 50 |
Because the garden was deserted, | |
The blither place for me! | |
Friends, blame me not! a narrow ken | |
Hath childhood ‘twixt the sun and sward: | |
We draw the moral afterward— | 55 |
We feel the gladness then. | |
And gladdest hours for me did glide | |
In silence at the rose-tree wall: | |
A thrush made gladness musical | |
Upon the other side. | 60 |
Nor he nor I did e’er incline | |
To peck or pluck the blossoms white:— | |
How should I know but that they might | |
Lead lives as glad as mine? | |
To make my hermit-home complete, | 65 |
I brought clear water from the spring | |
Praised in its own low murmuring, | |
And cresses glossy wet. | |
And so, I thought, my likeness grew | |
(Without the melancholy tale) | 70 |
To ‘gentle hermit of the dale,’ | |
And Angelina too. | |
For oft I read within my nook | |
Such minstrel stories; till the breeze | |
Made sounds poetic in the trees, | 75 |
And then I shut the book. | |
If I shut this wherein I write, | |
I hear no more the wind athwart | |
Those trees, nor feel that childish heart | |
Delighting in delight. | 80 |
My childhood from my life is parted, | |
My footstep from the moss which drew | |
Its fairy circle round: anew | |
The garden is deserted. | |
Another thrush may there rehearse | 85 |
The madrigals which sweetest are; | |
No more for me!—myself afar | |
Do sing a sadder verse. | |
Ah me! ah me! when erst I lay | |
In that child’s-nest so greenly wrought, | 90 |
I laugh’d unto myself and thought, | |
‘The time will pass away.’ | |
And still I laugh’d, and did not fear | |
But that, whene’er was pass’d away | |
The childish time, some happier play | 95 |
My womanhood would cheer. | |
I knew the time would pass away; | |
And yet, beside the rose-tree wall, | |
Dear God, how seldom, if at all, | |
Did I look up to pray! | 100 |
The time is past: and now that grows | |
The cypress high among the trees, | |
And I behold white sepulchres | |
As well as the white rose,— | |
When wiser, meeker thoughts are given, | 105 |
And I have learnt to lift my face, | |
Reminded how earth’s greenest place | |
The colour draws from heaven,— | |
It something saith for earthly pain, | |
But more for heavenly promise free, | 110 |
That I who was, would shrink to be | |
That happy child again. |