Poems (Forrest)/Dream gardens
DREAM GARDENS
I shall dream gardens wherever I sleep! If Chance make my bed in the open sea I shall dream gardens, wherever I beOn the shifting sands where the samphires creep.
In the wash of waters by cape and rock Or an islet fringed with a coral reef I shall find a pleasance of bloom and leaf,A wild red rose and a milk-white stock.
Violets, like those you used to bring, Lilies, pale gold for a golden bee— I shall plan a hive 'neath the tumbling seaFor brown striped body and gauzy wing.
For I must have bees in my mignonette. When I find wide beds of it in the blue, With dusty helmets where sun soaks through,The flowers you tended will not forget!
I shall grow dream gardens wherever I sleep. Though they shape my couch of a cold grey stone And carve a cross where I lie alone,There will be a chink where the grasses peep.
And the scattered buds of a wind-torn tree, Bauhinia, bright as butterfly. Till a page will turn in a sunlit skyAnd I read the blossoms that used to be.
In the crumbling clay, when the light has gone, I shall build me towers where the tall palm stands; I shall fill with myrtles my hungry handsFrom the hanging gardens of Babylon.
In wandering ocean, in earth-ditch deep I shall see green grass and the poppies blow. I may fail of Heaven; but this I know,God will plant gardens through all my sleep!