20. The Garden

THERE is a fenceless garden overgrown

With buds and blossoms and all sorts of leaves;

And once, among the roses and the sheaves,

The Gardener and I were there alone.

He led me to the plot where I had thrown

The fennel of my days on wasted ground,

And in that riot of sad weeds I found

The fruitage of a life that was my own.

My life! Ah, yes, there was my life, indeed!

And there were all the lives of humankind;

And they were like a book that I could read,

Whose every leaf, miraculously signed,

Outrolled itself from Thought’s eternal seed.

Love-rooted in God’s garden of the mind.