THE NEW GARDEN.
Reading edition
———
BY EMILY HERRMANN.
———
He knows we love the flowers so well.
And so they bloom His love to tell.
Ewald
We are filling our new-fenced garden
With fresh young vines and flowers,
And here we are often busy
In the clear, long evening hours.
The sun shines through the paling,
And over the landscape green;
Blue smoke-wreaths are lazily curling
O’er-arching the quiet scene;
They rise from the woodman’s clearing,
They rise from his chimney low,
They bend to his tiny wheat-field,
Then mount to yon hills of snow.
A change has come o’er its seeming
Since first when we knew the place,
A change in the woody landscape,
A change in a youthful face.
And changes have moved the spirit
That muses above it now,
Since the wild-berry clusters glittered
At noon o’er my upturned brow.
I stand in our pleasant garden
And gaze down the years’ long track,
I cherish right well their guerdon,
But I would not win them back!
Our brook on its way is babbling,
And hastes from the open space,
It misses the great oak’s shading—
It misses the wild-vine’s grace.
Yet it patiently stops to listen
The wood-bird’s evening hymn,
Then gushes a gurgling chorus
Ere the way grows cold and dim—
Where glooms of the arching forest
Lie dark on its lowly breast,
Yet it sings to the deep green mosses,
And the bird in her cradled nest.
Thanks, thanks for the changeless spirit,
That lives in the hills and streams!
Like goodness it aye grows dearer
As we fade from our life’s young dreams!
As love to our hearts is precious,
Are voices of leaves and flowers;
Our God, in His wisdom, knew it,
In kindness He made them ours!