The Garden that Fades Not

u WHERE dost thou idly wander!
What doest thou moping yonder;
Leave those bald peaks and join thy friends below!

Thy garden-bowers look chilly:
Rose, hyacinth, nor lily,
Can bud where mists are thick and bleak winds blow.

"The valley-gardens flourish:
Rich rains and sunbeams nourish
The laughing children of the meads and dells.

Each bud outblooms the other;
And sister-flower and brother
Tinkle in Zephyr's ear their sweetest bells.

"But on the mountains wither
All flowers thou takest thither:
Lifeless they lie, and will revive no more.

Doth not their fate dismay thee!
Come down, come down, I pray thee,
And leave the wreck thou vainly mournest o'er!"

The gardener heard, unheeding,
The valley-tenant pleading;
Spell-fettered, as in some dim dream he stood,

Until the gold and dun light
Which tracks the waning sunlight
Shed o'er the floor of Heaven its gorgeous flood.

And, as the shades descended,
And Day and Dusk were blended,
And Fancy shaped wild wonders in the sky.

And each cloud-woven streamer
Floated aloft, the dreamer
Gazed on the firmanent with tranced eye.

"There, earth-enamored stranger,"
He cried, u thy mountain-ranger
His garden only glories to behold!

Appear these bowers so chilly?
Can hyacinth nor lily
Spring up in yon full fields of blue and gold?

"These be the bowers my spirit
Shall one bright day inherit;
There stands for me an undecaying dome.

Seest not its pillars gleaming?
Seest not its pennons streaming?
Go, grovel in thy vale! 1 know my home I"