A Fancy From Fontenelle.

"De mémoires de Roses on n'a point vu mourir le Jardinier."


The Rose in the garden slipped her bud,
And she laughed in the pride of her youthful blood,
As she thought of the Gardener standing by--
"He is old,--so old! And he soon must die!"

The full Rose waxed in the warm June air,
And she spread and spread till her heart lay bare;
And she laughed once more as she heard his tread--
"He is older now! He will soon be dead!"

But the breeze of the morning blew, and found
That the leaves of the blown Rose strewed the ground;
And he came at noon, that Gardener old,
And he raked them gently under the mould.

And I wove the thing to a random rhyme,
For the Rose is Beauty, the Gardener, Time.

Henry Austin Dobson

Henry Austin Dobson, commonly known as Austin Dobson, was an English poet and essayist. A civil servant by profession, Dobson was one of the most renowned poets and literary critics of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. His work is noted for its delicate craftsmanship and profound interest in 18th-century literature. Dobson's poetry often revisited and celebrated historical themes and characters, blending scholarly interest with lyrical form.

Henry Austin Dobson

The Passionate Printer To His Love

Henry Austin Dobson, Simple Poetry

Prologue To Abbey's "Quiet Life."

Henry Austin Dobson, Simple Poetry

Molly Trefusis.

Henry Austin Dobson, Simple Poetry

A Familiar Epistle

Henry Austin Dobson, Simple Poetry

English

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The Mossrose

    Walking to-day in your garden, O gracious lady,
    Little you thought as you turned in that alley remote and shady,
    And gave me a rose and asked if I knew its savour--
    The old-world scent of the mossrose, flower of a bygone favour--

    Little you thought as you waited the word of appraisement,
    Laughing at first and then amazed at my amazement,
    That the rose you gave was a gift already cherished,
    And the garden whence you plucked it a garden long perished.

    But I--I saw that garden, with its one treasure
    The tiny mossrose, tiny even by childhood's measure,
    And the long morning shadow of the dusty laurel,
    And a boy and a girl beneath it, flushed with a childish quarrel.

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Garden-Fancies - I. The Flowers Name

I.

Heres the garden she walked across,
Arm in my arm, such a short while since:
Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss
Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!
She must have reached this shrub ere she turned,
As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned,
To feed and forget it the leaves among.

II.

Down this side ofthe gravel-walk
She went while her robes edge brushed the box:
And here she paused in her gracious talk
To point me a moth on the milk-white flox.
Roses, ranged in valiant row,
I will never think that she passed you by!
She loves you noble roses, I know;
But yonder, see, where the rock-plants lie!

III.

This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,
Stoope...

Robert Browning

The Old English Garden - A Floral Phantasy

In an old world garden dreaming,
Where the flowers had human names,
Methought, in fantastic seeming,
They disported as squires and dames.

Of old in Rosamond's Bower,
With it's peacock hedges of yew,
One could never find the flower
Unless one was given the clue;
So take the key of the wicket,
Who would follow my fancy free,
By formal knot and clipt thicket,
And smooth greensward so fair to see

And while Time his scythe is whetting,
Ere the dew from the grass has gone,

The Four Seasons' flight forgetting,
As they dance round the dial stone;

With a leaf from an old English book,
A Jonquil will serve for a pen.

Let us note from the green arbour's nook,
Flowers masking like women and men.


FIRST in VENUS'...

Walter Crane

The Transplanted Rose Tree.

Amid the flowers of a garden glade
    A lovely rose tree smiled,
And the sunbeams shone, the zephyrs played,
    'Round the gardens favorite child;
And the diamond dew-drops glistening fell
    On each rose's silken vest,
Whilst light winged bee and butterfly gay
    On the soft leaves loved to rest.

But one morn while a sunbeam bright
    Lit up its delicate bloom,
And a zephyr lightly hovered 'round,
    On wings of sweet perfume,
A strong hand came, and ruthlessly
    Tore up the parent tree,
And bore it off, with each fair young rose,
    From butterfly, zephyr and bee.

What mattered it that an antique vase
    Of Sèvres costly and old,
Was destined, henceforth, in royal State,
    Its fair young form to hold?
What m...

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

Growing Gray.

"On a l'âge de son coeur."--A. d'Houdetot.


A little more toward the light;--
Me miserable! Here's one that's white;
And one that's turning;
Adieu to song and "salad days;"
My Muse, let's go at once to Jay's,
And order mourning.

We must reform our rhymes, my Dear,--
Renounce the gay for the severe,--
Be grave, not witty;
We have, no more, the right to find
That Pyrrha's hair is neatly twined,--
That Chloe's pretty.

Young Love's for us a farce that's played;
Light canzonet and serenade
No more may tempt us;
Gray hairs but ill accord with dreams;
From aught but sour didactic themes
Our years exempt us.

Indeed! you really fancy so?
You think for one white streak we grow
At once satiric?
A fiddlestick! Eac...

Henry Austin Dobson

The Gossips

A rose in my garden, the sweetest and fairest,
    Was hanging her head through the long golden hours;
And early one morning I saw her tears falling,
    And heard a low gossiping talk in the bowers.
The yellow Nasturtium, a spinster all faded,
    Was telling a Lily what ailed the poor Rose:
"That wild roving Bee who was hanging about her,
    Has jilted her squarely, as every one knows.

"I knew when he came, with his singing and sighing,
    His airs and his speeches so fine and so sweet,
Just how it would end; but no one would believe me,
    For all were quite ready to fall at his feet."
"Indeed, you are wrong," said the Lily-belle proudly,
    "I cared nothing for him; he called on me once,
And would have come often, no doubt, if I'd asked him,
    But t...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox