A Ruined Garden

All my roses are dead in my Garden —
What shall I do?
Winds in the night, without pity or pardon,
Came there and slew.

All my song-birds are dead in their bushes —
Woe for such things!
Robins and linnets and blackbirds and thrushes,
Dead, with stiff wings.

Oh, my Garden! rifled and flowerless.
Waste now and drear;
Oh, my Garden! barren and bowerless,
Through all the year.

Oh, my dead birds! each in his nest there,
So cold and stark;
What was the horrible death that pressed there
When skies were dark?

What shall I do for my roses' sweetness,
The summer round, —
For all my Garden's divine completeness
Of scent and sound?

I will leave my Garden for winds to harry;
Where once was peace.
Let the bramble-vine and the wild brier marry.
And greatly increase.

But I will go to a land men know not, —
A far, still land.
Where no birds come, and where roses blow not
And no trees stand:

Where no fruit grows, where no spring makes riot,
But, row on row,
Heavy and red and pregnant with quiet
The poppies blow.

And there shall I be made whole of sorrow,
Have no more care, —
No bitter thought of the coming morrow.
Or days that were.