My grandmother's garden! how well I remember
That spot that delighted my eyes when a boy!
From the balm-breathing June to the mellowed September,
I hailed its fresh blossoms each morning with joy.
In fancy I see it when eve dark and chilly,
O'ercasting the city, forbids me to roam:
In memory blossom the rose and the lily
When solitude freshens the pictures of home.
I seem on the garden-gate swinging and singing,
Or on the bars leaning in summer eves long;
And, waiting my father his team homeward bringing,
I list once again to the whippoorwill's song.
I remember the porch where the woodbine in clusters
Of billowy green o'er the white roses hung;
The swallows, whose purple and emerald lustres
Shot swift through the air where the orioles sung.
O'er the old mossy wall, in the mellow airs blowing,
The lilies made fragrant the evenings of May;
And close by the door where the house-leeks were growing,
My grandmother's garden, my pleasure-ground, lay.
Anear was the orchard, the moss to it clinging,
The home of the birds and the banquet of bees:
I loved, in the spring-time, when church-bells were ringing,
The peaceful white Sundays that came to the trees.
My grandmother's garden with green box was bordered;
There bloomed the blue myrtles, the first flowers of spring;
There the peony's leaves seemed with pansies embroidered;
And hands of the fairies the bluebells to swing.
The balm-bed was there; the sweets from its flowers
The hummingbirds, gemming the air, came to draw:
And peeped from the woodbine and jessamine bowers
The hives of the honey-bees golden with straw.
There oft, with her hymn-book, my grandmother wandered,
Then seated herself in the arbor alone.
And read the old hymns and on holy themes pondered,
While long on the hill-tops the western light shone.
The well-sweep was there in the elm-tree's broad shadow,
And o'er it the golden-dressed orioles swung,
And a path from the old road and path from the meadow
At the broad curb-stone met where the cool bucket hung.
They are gone, all are gone, whom that garden once gladdened:
No more shall I see them, — the young or the old:
Nor my grandmother's face with long memories saddened;
Her crown of bright silver is changed into gold.
Dimmer lights have the springs and the summers that follow;
The charm of the roses is not now as then;
In duller gold skies flits the purple-winged swallow;
My heart ne'er will feel its old freshness again.
The joys youth expected were lost in the winning;
The distance enchanting from death's door is gone;
And life a lost thread, like the fire-fly's, is spinning:
I am lonely at night and am weary at morn.
But oft, with emotion that time doth not harden,
I turn to my old home, its lessons recall;
And the brightest of scenes is my grandmother's garden,
Its pansies of spring, and its asters of fall.
And wherever I roam, in whatever bright harbor
The anchor may drop, I remember with joy
The hymns that in summer-time rose from the arbor
In that blooming garden when I was a boy.