IN PRAISE OF GARDENS 



Of manners, like its viewless fence, 

 Ensuring peace to innocence. 



Thus spake the moral Muse her wing 

 Abruptly spreading to depart, 

 She left that farewell offering, 

 Moments of some docile heart; 

 That may respect the good old age 

 When Fancy was Truth's willing Page; 

 And Truth would skim the flowery glade, 

 Though entering but as Fancy's Shade. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 



Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite 

 Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love. 

 News from the humming city comes to it 

 In sound of funeral or of marriage bells; 

 And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear 

 The windy clanging of the minster clock; 

 Although between it and the garden lies 

 A league of grass, wash'd by a slow broad stream 

 That, stirr'd with languid pulses of the oar, 

 Waves all its lilies. 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 

 (The Gardener's Daughter.) 



[170] 



