The Gardens

The landscape now reveals a change;
A stair—that twinèd elm-boughs hold
Enclosed 'mid hedges mystic, strange—
Inaugurates a green and gold
Vision of gardens, range on range.


Each step's a hope, that doth ascend
Stairwise to expectation's height;
A weary way it is to wend
While noonday suns are burning bright.
But rest waits at the evening's end.


Streams, that wash white from sin, flow deep,
And round about the fresh lawns twine;
While there, beneath the green banks steep,
Beside his cross, the Lamb Divine
Lies tranquilly in peaceful sleep.


The daisied grass is glad, and gay
With crystal butterflies the hedge.
Where globes of fruit shine blue; here stray
Peacocks beside the box-trees' edge:
A shining lion bars the way.


Flowers, upright as the ecstasies
And ardours of white spirits pure,
With branches springing fountain-wise,
Burst upward, and by impulse sure
To their own soaring splendour rise.


Gently and very slowly swayed.
The wind a wordless rhapsody
Sings—and the shimm'ring air doth braid
An aureole of filigree
Round every disk with emerald laid.


Even the shade is but a flight
Toward flickering radiances, that slip
From space to space; and now the light
Sleeps, with calmed rays, upon the lip
Of lilac-blossoms golden-white.

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