An Old-fashioned Garden

Strange, is it not? She was making her garden,
    Planting the old-fashioned flowers that day
Bleeding-hearts tender and bachelors-buttons
    Spreading the seeds in the old-fashioned way.

Just in the old fashioned way, too, our quarrel
    Grew until, angrily, she set me free
Planting, indeed, bleeding hearts for the two of us,
    Ordaining bachelors buttons for me.

Envoi

Strange, was it not? But seeds planted in anger
    Sour in the earth and, ere long, a decay
Withered the bleeding hearts, blighted the buttons,
    And, we were wed, in the old-fashioned way.

Ellis Parker Butler

Ellis Parker Butler was an American author, humorist, and poet, best known for his short story 'Pigs Is Pigs.' Born on December 5, 1869, in Muscatine, Iowa, Butler became a prolific writer, contributing to numerous magazines and books over his career. He is remembered for his wit and humor, which marked his work. Butler passed away on September 13, 1937.

Ellis Parker Butler

Little Ballads Of Timely Warning; III: On Laziness And Its Resultant Ills

Ellis Parker Butler, Simple Poetry

The Romance Of Patrolman Casey

Ellis Parker Butler, Simple Poetry

The Ballad Of A Bachelor

Ellis Parker Butler, Simple Poetry

A Parisian Episode

Ellis Parker Butler, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

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

An Old Bouquet

I opened a long closed drawer to-day,
And among the souvenirs stored away
Were the faded leaves of an old bouquet.

Those faded leaves were as white as snow,
With a background of green, to make them show,
When you gave them to me long years ago.

They carried me back in a flash of light
To a perfumed, perfect summer night,
And a rider who came on a steed of white.

I can see it all -how you rode down
Like a knight of old, from the dusty town,
With a passionate glow in your eyes of brown.

Again I stand by the garden gate,
While the golden sun slips low, and wait
And watch your coming, my love, my fate.

Young and handsome and debonair
You leap to my side in the garden there,
And I take your flowers, and call them fair.

...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Garden

    We owned a garden on a hill,
    We planted rose and daffodil,
    Flowers that English poets sing,
    And hoped for glory in the Spring.

    We planted yellow hollyhocks,
    And humble sweetly-smelling stocks,
    And columbine for carnival,
    And dreamt of Summer's festival.

    And Autumn not to be outdone
    As heiress of the summer sun,
    Should doubly wreathe her tawny head
    With poppies and with creepers red.

    We waited then for all to grow,
    We planted wallflowers in a row.
    And lavendar and borage blue,,
    Alas! we waited, I and you,
    But love was all that ever grew.

        Long Barn
        Summer, 1915

Victoria Mary Sackville-West

Berrying

I.

My love went berrying
Where brooks were merrying
And wild wings ferrying
    Heaven's amethyst;
The wildflowers blessed her,
My dearest Hester,
The winds caressed her,
    The sunbeams kissed.


II.

I followed, carrying
Her basket; varying
Fond hopes of marrying
    With hopes denied;
Both late and early
She deemed me surly,
And bowed her curly
    Fair head and sighed:


III.

"The skies look lowery;
It will he showery;
No longer flowery
    The way I find.
No use in going.
'T will soon be snowing
If you keep growing
    Much more unkind."


IV.

Then looked up tearfully.
And I, all fearfully,
Replied, "My dear, fully
    Will I ex...

Madison Julius Cawein

Warned

They stood at the garden gate.
    By the lifting of a lid
She might have read her fate
    In a little thing he did.

He plucked a beautiful flower;
    Tore it away from its place
On the side of the blooming bower;
    And held it against his face.

Drank in its beauty and bloom,
    In the midst of his idle talk;
Then cast it down to the gloom
    And dust of the garden walk.

Ay, trod it under his foot,
    As it lay in his pathway there;
Then spurned it away with his boot,
    Because it bad ceased to be fair.

Ah! the maiden might have read
    The doom of her young life then;
But she looked in his eyes instead,
    And thought him the king of men.

She looked in his eyes and blushed,
    She hid in his s...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Parables

I

Dear Love, you ask if I be true,
If other women move
The heart that only beats for you
With pulses all of love.

Out in the chilly dew one morn
I plucked a wild sweet rose,
A little silver bud new-born
And longing to unclose.

I took it, loving new-born things,
I knew my heart was warm,
'O little silver rose, come in
And shelter from the storm.'

And soon, against my body pressed,
I felt its petals part,
And, looking down within my breast
I saw its golden heart.

O such a golden heart it has,
Your eyes may never see,
To others it is always shut,
It opens but for me.

But that is why you see me pass
The honeysuckle there,
And leave the lilies in the grass,
Although they be so fair;

Richard Le Gallienne