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Merrill's Garden

by John Frederick Freeman

There is a garden where the seeded stems of thin long grass are bowed

Beneath July's slow rains and heat and tired children's trailing feet;

And the trees' neglected branches droop and make a cloud beneath the cloud,

And in that dark the crimson dew of raspberries shines more sweet than sweet.

The flower of the tall acacia's gone, the acacia's flower is white no more,

The aspen lifts his pithless arms, the aspen leaves are close and still;

The wind that tossed the clouds along, gray clouds and white like feathers bore,

Lets even a feather faintly fall and smoke spread hugely where it will.

But though the acacia's flower is gone and raspberries bear bright fruit untasted,

Beauty lives there, oh rich and rare, past the sum of eager June.

The lime tree's pyramid of flower and leaf and yellow flower unwasted

Rises at eve and bars the breast wild-heaving of the timid moon.

Now the tall pear-trees unrebuked lift their green fingers to the sky;

Their lower boughs are crossed like arms of templars in long stony sleep.

Their arms are crossed as though the wind, returning from wild war on high,

Had touched them with an angry breath, or whispered from his cavern deep.

A foxglove lifts her bells and bells silent above the singing grass,

Still the old marigold her light sprinkles like riches to the poor.

Snapdragon still his changeling blossom shakes with the burden of the bees,

And the strong bindweed creeps and winds and springs on high a conqueror.

* * * * *

Would now her eyes grieve to behold snapdragon, foxglove, marigold

Daily diminish in their sweet and bindweed wreathing over all--

Weed and grass and weed and grass, friendless, melancholy, cold,

Wreathing the earth like wreathing snow from bare wall to low greening wall?

Old were her eyes that lingered on old trees and grass and flowers trim.

She smelt the ripe pears when they drooped and fell and broke upon the path.

Old were her thoughts of things of old; her present thoughts were few and dim;

Her eyes saw not the things she saw; she listened, to no living breath.

Her youth and prime and autumn time bloomed in her thought all light and sweet:

No wallflower more of sweet could hold, of sunny light no marigold.

Fruit on her mind's boughs ripened full, in summer's and calm autumn's heat:

Then fell, for there came none to pick; but winter came, and she was old.

Now if her sons come they will find--not her: her empty garden only,

The wallflower done and snapdragon still swinging with the greedy bees,

Marigold glittering in the grass, scant foxglove ringing faintly, lonely,

Close red fruit beading the long boughs and bindweed wreathing where it please.

A tawny lean cat Marmalade slinks like a panther through the tall

Thin bending grass and watches long a scholar thrush rehearsing song;

Or children running in the sun hunt and hunt a well lost ball;

But most the garden sleeps away the day, but still, when eves are long,

When eves are long and no moon rises, and nervous, still, is all the air,

That small stiff figure moves again, silent amid the hushing grass;

In the firm-carven lime tree's shade she moves, and meets her old thoughts there,

Then in the deepening dark is lost, or her light steps unnoted pass.

Only that careless garden keeps secure her memory though it sleeps,

And the bright flowers and tyrant weed and tall grass shaking its loud seed

Less lovely were if wanting her who like a living thought still creeps

And sees what once she saw and music hears of her living sons and dead.