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!¡ª 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¡ª 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:¡ª
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!¡ªmyself 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,¡ª
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,¡ª
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.
Literary Analysis
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Summary
Elizabeth Barrett Browning speaks from memory, returning to a once-abandoned garden that, as a child, she claimed as her private refuge. What first appears as a ruined place becomes, in the child's imagination, a secret kingdom: the overgrown grass, moss, roses, and tangled trees make it richer to her than any carefully tended garden could be. The poem moves through this remembered haven in a series of vivid reflections, showing how the child's delight came not from ownership or usefulness, but from solitude, discovery, and the freedom to invent meaning where others saw neglect.
As the poem progresses, the speaker widens the scene into a meditation on time, innocence, and spiritual growth. She remembers how little she understood then of loss, class, beauty, or mortality, and how naturally she assumed that her childhood happiness would simply be replaced by another joy in adulthood. The closing turns make the central tension clear: the garden's desolation mirrors the passing of childhood itself, yet the speaker now recognizes that maturity brings a different wisdom, one that sees earthly beauty as bound up with divine promise. What once felt like pure gladness is now tinged with sorrow, but that sorrow deepens rather than cancels the poem's tenderness toward the child she was.
Form Breakdown
Theme
- Childhood innocence - The child enjoys the garden without interpreting it through duty, property, or social rank, trusting delight itself as sufficient meaning.
- Memory and loss - The poem looks back on a vanished place and a vanished self, making recollection both precious and painful.
- Nature's reclaiming power - The overgrown garden shows nature covering human order and restoring the ground to itself.
- Growth into spiritual awareness - The final movement links maturity with humility, prayer, and a clearer sense of heaven.
- Private imagination - The deserted garden becomes a self-made world in which the child can explore, read, and feel free.
- Earthly beauty and transience - Roses, moss, and birdsong are lovely precisely because they do not last, which gives the poem its quiet sadness.
Literary Devices
- Enclosed rhyme - The poem's tight rhyme pattern helps contain a meditative flow, mirroring the speaker's effort to hold a vanished past within memory.
- Imagery - Rich visual and sensory details such as moss, roses, dew, and birdsong make the garden feel intimate and alive.
- Contrast - The poem repeatedly contrasts child and adult, deserted and cultivated, earthly and heavenly, to sharpen its emotional argument.
- Personification - Nature is described as if it actively protects and sanctifies the garden, giving the landscape moral force.
- Irony - Figures who once prized or dismissed the roses are outdone by a child who understands them through affection rather than status.
- Allusion - Brief references to literary figures and stories connect the child's play to a wider world of poetic imagination.
- Repetition - Repeated phrases about the deserted garden and passing time reinforce the sense of return, loss, and reflection.
Symbolism
- The deserted garden - A symbol of childhood itself: neglected by the world, yet fertile with inward life and imagination.
- The mossy circle - A small protected center that suggests a private sanctuary, almost a hidden altar of memory.
- The white roses - Emblems of beauty that can be admired without being possessed, and of purity touched by time.
- The thrush - A sign of natural joy continuing beyond human sorrow, and of song that outlasts personal experience.
- The cypress - A traditional image of mourning that marks the speaker's movement toward awareness of mortality.
- The spring water - A symbol of refreshment and inward completeness, as if the child's world needs little more than itself.
Tone
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tone is gently reflective, affectionate, and quietly chastened. She remembers the child's delight without mocking it, yet she also allows adult awareness to soften the scene with regret and spiritual seriousness. For the reader, the mood shifts from playful secrecy to wistful reverence, then to a calm sadness that is not bleak but contemplative. The poem feels intimate and hushed, as though the garden survives most vividly not in the landscape but in the speaker's changed understanding of it.
Historical Context
Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote within the Victorian period, when poets often joined close observation of nature with inward reflection, moral feeling, and questions about faith. Her work frequently blends lyric intensity with personal meditation, and this poem fits that pattern by turning a childhood memory into a larger inquiry about time, innocence, and spiritual growth.
The poem also reflects a long Romantic and post-Romantic interest in childhood as a state of imaginative freshness. At the same time, its attention to social rank, literary allusion, and religious inwardness places it firmly in a nineteenth-century English tradition where private memory could become a serious subject for poetry.
Similar Poems
- My Heart Leaps Up - William Wordsworth
- Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood - William Wordsworth
- Fern Hill - Dylan Thomas
- The Garden of Proserpine - Algernon Charles Swinburne