No One Can Rightly Call His Garden

From Sunny Woof And Cloudy Weft Fell Rain In Sheets; So, To Myself I Hummed These Hazard Rhymes, And Left The Learned Volume On The Shelf.

Have You Never, When Waves Were Breaking, Watched Children At Sport On The Beach, With Their Little Feet Tempting The Foam-fringe, Till With Stronger And Further Reach Than They Dreamed Of, A Billow Comes Bursting, How They Turn And Scamper And Screech!

A Garden That One Makes Oneself Becomes Associated With One’s Personal History And That Of One’s Friends, Interwoven With One’s Tastes, Preferences And Character And Constitutes A Sort Of Unwritten Autobiography.

Never Did Form More Fairy Thread The Dance Than She Who Scours The Hills To Find It Flowers; Never Did Sweeter Lips Chained Ears Entrance Than Hers That Move, True To Its Striking Hours; No Hands So White E'er Decked The Warrior's Lance, As Those Which Tend Its Lamp As Darkness Lours; And Never Since Dear Christ Expired For Man, Had Holy Shrine So Fair A Sacristan.

Through The Dripping Weeks That Follow One Another Slow, And Soak Summer's Extinguished Fire And Autumn's Drifting Smoke.