,
Nor any frost that mars,
Only the wind of love
Under the early stars,--

The living breath that moves
Whispering to and fro,
Like the voice of God in the dusk
Of the garden long ago.

Garden Magic

Within my stone-walled garden
(I see her standing now,
Uplifted in the twilight,
With glory on her brow!)

I love to walk at evening
And watch, when winds are low,
The new moon in the tree-tops,
Because she loved it so!

And there entranced I listen,
While flowers and winds confer,
And all their conversation
Is redolent of her.

I love the trees that guard it,
Upstanding and serene,
So noble, so undaunted,
Because that was her mien.

I love the brook that bounds it,
Because its silver voice
Is like her bubbling laughter
That made the world rejoice.

I love the golden jonquils,
Because she used to say,
If soul could choose a color
It would be clothed as they.

I love the blue-gray iris,
Because her eyes were blue,
Sea-deep and heaven-tender
In meaning and in hue.

I love the small wild roses,
Because she used to stand
Adoringly above them
And bless them with her hand.

These were her boon companions.
But more than all the rest
I love the April lilac,
Because she loved it best.

Soul of undying rapture!
How love's enchantment clings,
With sorcery and fragrance,
About familiar things!

In Gold Lacquer

Gold are the great trees overhead,
And gold the leaf-strewn grass,
As though a cloth of gold were spread
To let a seraph pass.
And where the pageant should go by,
Meadow and wood and stream,
The world is all of lacquered gold,
Expectant as a dream.

Against the sunset's burning gold,
Etched in dark monotone
Behind its alley of grey trees
And gateposts of grey stone,
Stands the Old Manse, about whose eaves
An air of mystery clings,
Abandoned to the lonely peace
Of bygone ghostly things.

In molten gold the river winds
With languid sweep and turn,
Beside the red-gold wooded hill
Yellowed with ash and fern.
The streets are tiled with gold-green shade
And arched with fretted gold,
Ecstatic aisles that richly thread
This minster grim and old.

The air is flecked with filtered gold,--
The shimmer of romance
Whose ageless glamour still must hold
The world as in a trance,
Pouring o'er every time and place
Light