IN PRAISE OF GARDENS 



In the world's pagan wrong, 

 Lay hid, feeding in the woodland on the last 

 true poet's song? 



Or was this the house of fairies, 

 Left, because of the rough ways, 

 Unassailed by Ave Marys 

 Which the passing pilgrim prays, 

 And beyond St. Catherine's chiming on the 

 blessed Sabbath days? 



Oh, the golden-hearted daisies 

 Witnessed there, before my youth, 

 To the truth of things, with praises 

 Of the beauty of the truth; 

 And I awoke to Nature's real, laughing joyfully 

 for both. 



And I said within me, laughing, 

 I have found a bower to-day, 

 A green lusus, fashioned half in 

 Chance and half in Nature's play, 

 And a little bird sings nigh it, I will never more 

 mis-say. 



[218] 



