A
Forsaken Garden
by Algernon Charles
Swinburne |
| In a coign of the cliff between lowland and
highland, |
| At the sea-down’s edge
between windward and lee, |
| Walled round with rocks as an inland island, |
| The ghost of a garden
fronts the sea. |
| A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses |
| The steep square slope of
the blossomless bed |
| Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of
its roses |
Now lie dead.
|
| The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, |
| To the low last edge of
the long lone land. |
| If a step should sound or a word be spoken, |
| Would a ghost not rise at
the strange guest’s hand ? |
| So long have the grey bare walks lain guestless, |
| Through branches and
briars if a man make way, |
| He shall find no life but the sea-wind’s restless |
Night and day.
|
| The dense hard passage is blind and stifled |
| That crawls by a track
none turn to climb |
| To the strait waste place that the years have
rifled |
| Of all but the thorns that
are touched not of time. |
| The thorns he spares when the rose is taken ; |
| The rocks are left when he
wastes the plain. |
| The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, |
These remain.
|
| Not a flower to be pressed of the foot that falls
not ; |
| As the heart of a dead man
the seed-plots are dry ; |
| From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale
calls not, |
| Could she call, there were
never a rose to reply. |
| Over the meadows that blossom and wither |
| Rings but the note of a
sea-bird’s song ; |
| Only the sun and the rain come hither |
All year long.
|
| The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels |
| One gaunt bleak blossom of
scentless breath. |
| Only the wind here hovers and revels |
| In a round where life
seems barren as death. |
| Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping, |
| Haply, of lovers none ever
will know, |
| Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping |
Years ago.
|
| Heart handfast in heart as they stood, ‘Look
thither,’ |
| Did he whisper ? ‘look
forth from the flowers to the sea ; |
| For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms
wither, |
| And men that love lightly
may die―but we ?’ |
| And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened, |
| And or ever
the garden’s last petals were shed, |
| In the lips that had whispered, the
eyes that had lightened, |
Love was dead.
|
| Or they loved their life through, and
then went whither ? |
| And were one
to the end―but what end who
knows ? |
| Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither, |
| As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose. |
| Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love
them ? |
| What love was ever as deep as a grave ? |
| They are loveless now as the grass above them |
Or the wave.
|
| All are at one now, roses and lovers. |
| Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea. |
| Not a breath of the time that has been hovers |
| In the air now soft with a summer to be. |
| Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons
hereafter |
| Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or
weep, |
| When as they that are free now of weeping and
laughter |
We shall sleep.
|
| Here death may deal not again for ever ; |
| Here change may come not till all change end. |
| From the graves they have made they shall rise up
never, |
| Who have left nought living to ravage and rend. |
| Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground
growing, |
| While the sun and the rain live, these shall be ; |
| Till a last wind’s breath upon all these blowing |
Roll the sea.
|
| Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, |
| Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, |
| Till the strength of the waves of the high tides
humble |
| The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink, |
| Here now in his triumph where all things falter, |
| Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand
spread, |
| As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, |
Death lies dead.
|
| A.C. Swinburne |
Classic Poems |
| |
|
[ A Forsaken Garden ] [ The Garden of Proserpine ] |
