Part 31 (1/2)

All night above that garden the rose-flushed moon will sail, Making the darkness deeper where hides the nightingale.

FLORENCE WILKINSON EVANS

COMO IN APRIL

The wind is Winter, though the sun be Spring: The icy rills have scarce begun to flow; The birds unconfidently fly and sing.

As on the land once fell the northern foe, The hostile mountains from the pa.s.ses fling Their vandal blasts upon the lake below.

Not yet the round clouds of the Maytime cling Above the world's blue wonder's curving show, And tempt to linger with their lingering.

Yet doth each slope a vernal promise know: See, mounting yonder, white as angel's wing.

A snow of bloom to meet the bloom of snow.

Love, need we more than our imagining To make the whole year May? What though The wind be Winter if the heart be Spring?

ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON

AN EXILE'S GARDEN

I live in the heart of a garden With cypresses all about; To the east and west, and the south and north, Straight shadowy paths run out.

There are ancient G.o.ds in my garden; They have faces young and pale; And a hundred thousand roses here Enrapture the nightingale.

Yet, among the G.o.ds of the garden, The roses and G.o.ds, I think, Daylong, of a far-off clover field, And the song of a bob-o-link.

SOPHIE JEWETT

THE CLOISTER GARDEN AT CERTOSA

It is a place monastic, set above The city's pride and pleasuring below; The benediction of the sky breathes love Over the olive trees and vines a-row.

The old gray walls are delicate to prayer And silence; in the corridors dim-lit Lurks many a painting, many a fresco rare Done by some brother for the joy of it.

Pale lavender and red pomegranate trees, Roses and poppies spilling garden sweets; And tall lush gra.s.s and grain, and, circling these, The cool of cloistral walks and shadowed seats.

By a sun-dial in the center, rests One brown-robed Father; and his lips recite Some holy word; little he heeds the jests Of those who make the world their chief delight.

While Florence, far below, from dreamy towers Throws back the sun and tolls the tranquil hours.

RICHARD BURTON

A GARDEN IN VENICE

There is a garden in a vineyard set Beneath the spell of Adriatic skies; A lovely place of dreams and ecstasies, Of color tangled in a verdant net, The s.h.i.+mmer of the low lagoon whose fret Washes the garden's length, and rose that vies With rose, pomegranate and tall flowers that rise Above their fellows in one glory met.