Poems (Scudder)/Jeanne and a City Garden

by Antoinette Quinby Scudder

JEANNE AND A CITY GARDEN

Often I thought of Jeanne the Maiden
 While I played in our garden all alone
Where a thousand-flowered honeysuckle
 Climbed an old barn wall of creamy stone.

Jeanne in the oak-wood of Domremy,
 Jeanne in her father's orchard-close
Hearing the sweet, unearthly Voices—
 Oh, far and very far from those

Seemed the little girl with tangled elf-locks
 In her knee-short frock of navy blue
Who read and dreamed of the Hero-Virgin
 While the warm June days dragged slowly through.

But I thought the eyes that Jeanne had visioned
 'Mid the dim oak-boughs of Domremy
Were looking down star-clear and tender
 Through the dark leaves of our tulip-tree.

And I heard faint voices through the clamor
 That over the neighbors' gardens came
Past the high brick wall where yellow roses
 Clambered and crept like a tawny flame.

And the tall dove-cote so oddly gabled
 Where a plump dove preened his moony breast
Was a Gothic spire of grey and silver
 Clear outlined on the rosy west.

And the flowers by the warm bricks growing
 Red, golden, violet—at a glance
Were splendid knights and ladies riding
 To the crowning of the King of France.

Still, when I read of green Domremy
 I can see that narrow garden plot
Where I grew heartsease and ragged-sailors
 In a border of forget-me-not.

Of its pebbled path and straggling laurels
 I think when I hear of Blessed Jeanne—
Of its climbing, tawny yellow roses
 That smelled like honey and cinnamon.