OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 



Though the poem is printed in a recently published volume, 

 it seems to fit naturally into this page. 



THE ST. GOTHARD 



April and 1 



Each with each greeting amid tumbled ice, 

 Travel these wastes of frozen purity. 

 Here the wild air above the precipice 

 E'en tasteth sweet, and hath a delicate scent 

 As of faint flowers unseen the flower of snows 

 Massed peak on peak in slumber yet unspent, 

 But dreaming of the Rose. 



Here the great hills wear silence as a seal 



April and I, 



Listening can hear the loosened snowflake steal 

 Down from the burdened bough that slips awry ; 

 Here the long cry of water-nymphs at play 

 Freezes upon the iced lips of fountains, 

 And their sweet limbs arrested holiday 

 In crystal carved engarlandeth the mountains. 



Through such vast fields of sleep how dare we roam, 



April and 1, 



And from its eyrie bid the torrent foam t 

 And virgin meads grow starrier than the slty 

 With scattered cowslip and with drifted bell? 

 Or where austerely looms an Alpine giant 

 Set a young almond rosily defiant 

 To be our sentinel? 

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