My Garden

If I could put my woods in song     And tell what's there enjoyed,     All men would to my gardens throng,     And leave the cities void.     In my plot no tulips blow,--     Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;     And rank the savage maples grow     From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red.     My garden is a forest ledge     Which older forests bound;     The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,     Then plunge to depths profound.     Here once the Deluge ploughed,     Laid the terraces, one by one;     Ebbing later whence it flowed,     They bleach and dry in the sun.     The sowers made haste to depart,--     The wind and the birds which sowed it;     Not for fame, nor by rules of art,     Planted these, and tempests flowed it.     Waters that wash my garden-side     Play not in Nature's lawful web,     They heed not moon or solar tide,--     Five years elapse from flood to ebb.     Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,     And every god,--none did refuse;     And be sure at last came Love,     And after Love, the Muse.     Keen ears can catch a syllable,     As if one spake to another,     In the hemlocks tall, untamable,     And what the whispering grasses smother.     Aeolian harps in the pine     Ring with the song of the Fates;     Infant Bacchus in the vine,--     Far distant yet his chorus waits.     Canst thou copy in verse one chime     Of the wood-bell's peal and cry,     Write in a book the morning's prime,     Or match with words that tender sky?     Wonderful verse of the gods,     Of one import, of varied tone;     They chant the bliss of their abodes     To man imprisoned in his own.     Ever the words of the gods resound;     But the porches of man's ear     Seldom in this low life's round     Are unsealed that he may hear.     Wandering voices in the air     And murmurs in the wold     Speak what I cannot declare,     Yet cannot all withhold.     When the shadow fell on the lake,     The whirlwind in ripples wrote     Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,     And omens above thought.     But the meanings cleave to the lake,     Cannot be carried in book or urn;     Go thy ways now, come later back,     On waves and hedges still they burn.     These the fates of men forecast,     Of better men than live to-day;     If who can read them comes at last     He will spell in the sculpture, 'Stay.'