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| FAIR is each budding thing the garden shows, | |
| From spring’s frail crocus to the latest bloom | |
| Of fading autumn. Every wind that blows | |
| Across that glowing tract sips rare perfume | |
| From all the tangled blossoms tossing there;— | 5 |
| Soft winds, they fain would linger long, nor any farther fare. | |
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| The morning-glories ripple o’er the hedge | |
| And fleck its greenness with their tinted foam; | |
| Sweet wilding things, up to the garden’s edge | |
| They love to wander from their meadow home, | 10 |
| To take what little pleasure here they may | |
| Ere all their silken trumpets close before the warm midday. | |
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| The larkspur lifts on high its azure spires, | |
| And up the arbor’s lattices are rolled | |
| The quaint nasturtium’s many-colored fires; | 15 |
| The tall carnation’s breast of faded gold | |
| Is striped with many a faintly-flushing streak, | |
| Pale as the tender tints that blush upon a baby’s cheek. | |
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| The old sweet-rocket sheds its fine perfumes; | |
| With golden stars the coreopsis flames; | 20 |
| And here are scores of sweet old-fashioned blooms | |
| Dear for the very fragrance of their names,— | |
| Poppies and gillyflowers and four-o’clocks, | |
| Cowslips and candytuft and heliotrope and hollyhocks, | |
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| Harebells and peonies and dragon-head, | 25 |
| Petunias, scarlet sage, and bergamot, | |
| Verbenas, ragged-robins, soft gold-thread, | |
| The bright primrose and pale forget-me-not, | |
| Wall-flowers and crocuses and columbines, | |
| Narcissus, asters, hyacinths, and honeysuckle vines, | 30 |
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| Foxgloves and marigolds and mignonette, | |
| Dahlias and lavender and damask rose. | |
| O dear old flowers, ye are blooming yet,— | |
| Each year afresh your lovely radiance glows: | |
| But where are they who saw your beauty’s dawn? | 35 |
| Ah, with the flowers of other years they long ago have gone! | |
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| They long have gone, but ye are still as fair | |
| As when the brides of eighty years ago | |
| Plucked your soft roses for their waving hair, | |
| And blossoms o’er their bridal-veils to strow. | 40 |
| Alas, your myrtle on a later day | |
| Marked those low mounds where ’neath the willows’ shade at last they lay! | |
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| Beside the walk the drowsy poppies sway, | |
| More deep of hue than is the reddest rose, | |
| And dreamy-warm as summer’s midmost day: | 45 |
| Proud, languorous queens of slumberous repose— | |
| Within their little chalices they keep | |
| The mystic witchery that brings mild, purple-lidded sleep. | |
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| Drowse on, soft flowers of quiet afternoons,— | |
| The breezes sleep beneath your lulling spell; | 50 |
| In dreamy silence all the garden swoons, | |
| Save where the lily’s aromatic bell | |
| Is murmurous with one low-humming bee, | |
| As oozy honey-drops are pilfered by that filcher wee. | |
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| And now is gone the dreamy afternoon,— | 55 |
| The sun has sunk below yon western height; | |
| The pallid silver of the harvest-moon | |
| Floods all the garden with its soft, weird light. | |
| The flowers long since have told their dewy beads, | |
| And naught is heard except the frogs’ small choir in distant meads. | 60 |
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