A Garden

High upon this bleak cliff where the wild wind dashes
Grows that little garden which my soul loves best,
Filled with flower faces, white, and blue, and yellow,
Sheltered from the east wind, cradled by the west.
Tossed against its limestone clings one pallid woodbine,
Spreads the golden trefoil, waves the hair-bell tall,
Gentians and saxifrage, pimpernel and eyebright,
That little hollow rift finds room enough for all.

Close along its ledges cluster snowy dryas,
Rose-like are the flowers, yet it clutches hard the rock,
Claw-like its rootlets, roots like claws of sea-gulls,
Scornful of the tempest, and proof ’gainst every shock.
Campions fill the corners, careless little growers,
Loved of the roving moth, which visits them at night;
Under silvery leaflets round balloon-like blossoms
Tumble in a tangled mat, mingled green and white.

Fierce cruel rifts spread around my garden,
Slashed in the living rock, reaching far below,
Through whose jagged hollows, narrow as a sword-cut,
Ocean’s mutter rises, ocean’s currents flow.
Smooth as the work of some famed and cunning sculptor,
See yon cup hollowed, graven by the tide;
Vacant now, yet wait till the waves returning landward
Send the salt spray flying in a fountain far and wide.

Shyly at night shine the beams into my garden,
Wavering threads of silver which glide along its rock,
Glittering in the darkness, peeping all around it,
Spreading high above it in a thin and misty flock.
Then, as their Lady climbs the silent heavens,
Leaning closely downwards, peering from the height,
Suddenly I spy how on one familiar blossom
Like a star has gathered all that grey and moony light.

Dear to our hearts are the flowers of the spring-time,
Lighters of our bleak months, breakers through the mould,
Scilla and snowdrop, windflower and crocus,
Brave little soldier-lads fearless of the cold!
Gorgeous and glorious the roses of our June days,
Solemn in its beauty the lily white and tall,
Gracious the flowers which come to us in autumn,
Yet the Rock-clan, the Rock-clan is dearest still of all!

Therefore little garden, garden all unheeded,
Watched by no warder save some rash indifferent gull,
Here at your rock-edge a tribute pen I offer,
Vowed long since to you and yours, if rusted now and dull
Rough, very rough, hath been your children’s nurture,
Helped by no shelter, no balmy Zephyrs blest,
Wild, most wild their mistress, wayward, fierce, bewitching,
Queen of moods and shadows, tempest-stirring West!