Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Songs, Ballads, and a Play (1888). III. An Orchard at AvignonA. Mary F. Robinson-Darmesteter (18571944)
T
They are as pale in summer time,
For herb or grass may never grow
Upon their slopes of lime.
A ring, all flowering in a round,
An orchard-ring of almond fills
The plot of stony ground.
Grown in well watered pasture land,
These parched and stunted branches, pink
Above the stones and sand.
Where very few will care to come,
Where spring hath lost the waving grace
She wears for us at home!
The holy whiteness of thy hills,
Their wreath of pale auroral flowers,
Their peace the silence fills.
Such peace as in an hour of pain
One moment fills the amazed heart,
And never comes again.