C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Alice Brown (1857–1948)
A Benedictine Garden
T
Faint bells of perfume swing and fall.
Within this apple-petaled wall
(A gray east flecked with rosy day)
The pink Laburnum lays her cheek
In married, matchless, lovely bliss,
Against her golden mate, to seek
His airy kiss.
Brood o’er their beds, a slumbrous gloom;
Dame Peony, red and ripe with bloom,
Swells the silk housing of her breast;
The Lilac, drunk to ecstasy,
Breaks her full flagons on the air,
And drenches home the reeling bee
Who found her fair.
What solemn pleasantry is thine,
Vowing to seek the life divine
Through abnegation and through loss!
Men but make monuments of sin
Who walk the earth’s ambitious round;
Thou hast the richer realm within
This garden ground.
Than chanting of this plumèd choir;
No jewel ever wore the fire
Hung on the dewdrop’s quivering throat.
A ruddier pomp and pageantry
Than world’s delight o’erfleets thy sod;
And choosing this, thou hast in fee
The peace of God.