Poems (Hardy)/In palo alto garden

by Irenè Hardy

IN PALO ALTO GARDEN

BROAD leaf and narrow leaf,
Banner-leaf and arrow-leaf
Wheel in the sun and sprinkle
Shadow and sun-spot, stem-streak and wrinkle,
With gloom and with glow.

Palm and banana,
Sequoia and canna,
Rustle and whisper and shake
Sheafage and spear-point, and break
Leafage and shadow, and make
Mysterious word-hints that wake
Memory and feeling, enticing the thought
To a green world full of leaves, till 'tis caught
By a trick of bud-bursting, or play
Of a flowering spray
Like that of a place and a time far away,
With the old tale of springtime,
Yet with language and rhythm and rime,
Beautiful, strange, and new.

Now the sun, a gold ship in the blue,
Snaring the thought in his net, sweeps
Out into spaces, off into deeps,
Till the soul turns backward in terror and creeps
Into old limits, looks for solace to earth:
To something familiar of form and hue,—
To star-eyed verbena that crawls,
Like a child with head up in its mirth,
Toward the bright spot of pansies;—to the roseleaf that falls
To the ground, resting surety enough that the world
Is tethered somehow, and cannot be lost
In the darkness of spaces, nor hurled,
Ere the day of its doom,
Out of the Hand that holds it, nor tossed
Into the furnace where dead worlds glow
Red hot, then turn to white ashes, and drift
Across the wide heaven, a dust or a gloom
That passes forgotten.
That passes forgotten.Ho, little flower,
Hast thou tethered me so?—me, unaware?
Bright-spirited, earthborn, lead me not such a race
As the sun leads. Keep to thy place
Predestined; keep to thy blossoming thrift;
Be a gay spot on the brown of the mould,
Be an odor, a ground-wreath, bless thine hour
Content with thine own proper dower.

Yonder beech, copper-leaved, symmetric, not overbold,
But respecting its forbears among strangers, seems
One kind of joy that Nature now knows
In expressing serenity, strength, and repose;
That linden, all a-honeyed, drones with bees
From its skirts to its crown. Every gain it has planned
By giving its thousands away out of hand,
Till the hives overfill,—till the sweetness pervades
All the lawn under-flowing this garden of trees.

What wonder is this, now? A dry stem of rose,
Dead past all hope, yet bright with a bloom,—
A chrysalis-miracle: wings and a spirit alive
Out of silence, and sleep, and the tomb.
Touch tenderly, shadow; rock softly, wind,
Till the folded wings, all a-tremble, unclose,
Spreading like petals of roses that strive
From the twists of the bud to be free.
And I know Reason will say I have sinned
Against her, putting by what she thinks to be so,
Having measured and proved. But it is and shall be,
That thought for assurance will go
Beyond fact, escaping from doubt to the emblem still;
From emblem to Prototype; there, then,
How fixed are the feet, how secure is the way!
So, O my soul, why glance with a chill
At yon sepulcher, and why shadow the day
With a question of When?

Sea-green and golden the evening sky glows
In the west over purple-blue hills;
Pale gray in the east, and a tint of rose
That satisfies and fills
All the wistful spaces of the heart,
Late and low streams the sun
Over low field and vineyard; late and low
Sing the thrush and the wren;
And once more ere it be dark,
Once more sings the lark
To his answering mate; one and one
To the hedge the mottled guails run;
And red and round above the bay
The full moon, rising, ends the day.
The gray road glimmers; yonder is my way.