All Quiet along the Potomac and other poems/The November Garden
THE NOVEMBER GARDEN.
POOR old weeping, faded garden!
Hear her moaning: "Well-a-day!
I had friends and wooing lovers
In the merry month of May.
Now I'm lonely,
With me only
Lingers dark and drear decay.
"Roses, with their lips of velvet,
Kissed me into summer's noon;
Dahlias promised faithful friendship
'Neath the yellow harvest-moon.
Fair and fleeting
Was each greeting;
Kiss and promise failed me soon.
"Artemisia, scorned in summer,
With her quaint and thrifty ways,
Only she has not forsaken
Through the dark November days.
But to cheer me
Still keeps near me,
Cheerful in the white sun-rays.
"Yonder forest glows in splendor;
Poets, artists, women fair,
Kneel before it, like an altar,
Heavenly-lighted, blazing there,
And its glory
Gilds the story,
Tints the picture, wreathes the hair."
"O wailing, worn, forsaken garden,"
Artemisia softly said,
"Know you not there's glory waiting
When these autumn days have sped—
A sequel glory
To Life s story,
A crown of crystal for the head?"
O'er the waiting, silent garden
Came, one starry, frosty night,
Strange new robes of shining splendor,
Crystalline and strangely bright.
So morning found
The garden crowned,
And robed in mystic robe of white.
Each leaf, and bough, and carved capsule,
Seeded plume, grass-blade, and stone,
With curious screen of spiders' weaving,
In a resplendent rainbow shone.
So, ere the morn
To earth was born,
The King redeemed her for his own.
