Lilacs

In lonely gardens deserted - unseen -
Oh! lovely lilacs of purple and white,
You are dipping down through a mist of green;
For the morning sun's delight.
And the velvet bee, all belted with black,
Drinks deep of the wine which your flagons hold,
Clings close to your plumes while he fills his pack
With a load of burnished gold.

You hide the fences with blossoms of snow,
And sweeten the shade of castle towers;
Over low, grey gables you brightly blow,
Like amethysts turned to flowers.
The tramp on the highway - ragged and bold -
Wears you close to his heart with jaunty air;
You rest in my lady's girdle of gold,
And are held against her hair.

In God's own acre your tender flowers,
Bend down to the grasses and seem to sigh
For those who count time no more by hours -
Whose summers have all passed by -
But at eventide the south wind will sing,
Like a gentle priest who chanteth a prayer;
And thy purple censers he'll set a-swing,
To perfume the twilight air.

Virna Sheard

Virna Sheard was a Canadian poet and novelist associated with the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She gained recognition for her poetry collections such as 'The Miracle, and Other Poems' and 'A Sea of Sunset'. Her work often explored themes of love, spirituality, and the natural world. Apart from poetry, she also wrote several novels that contributed significantly to Canadian literature of her time.

Virna Sheard

Saints

Virna Sheard, Simple Poetry

The Petition

Virna Sheard, Simple Poetry

The Knight-Errant

Virna Sheard, Simple Poetry

The Fairy Clock

Virna Sheard, 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 Shepherd Wind

When hills and plains are powdered white,
And bitter cold the north wind blows,
Upon my window in the night
A fairy-garden grows.

Here poppies that no hand hath sown
Bloom white as foam upon the sea,
And elfin bells to earth unknown
Hold frost-bound melody.

And here are blossoms like to stars
Tangled in nets of silver lace -
My very breath their beauty mars,
Or stirs them from their place.

Perchance the echoes of old songs
Found here a resting place at last
With drifting perfume that belongs
To roses of the past.

Or all the moonbeams that were lost
On summer nights the world forgets
May here be prisoned by the frost
With souls of violets.

The wind doth shepherd many things -
And when the nights are long an...

Virna Sheard

The Slumber Angel

When day is ended, and grey twilight flies
On silent wings across the tired land,
The slumber angel cometh from the skies -
The slumber angel of the peaceful eyes,
And with the scarlet poppies in his hand.

His robes are dappled like the moonlit seas,
His hair in waves of silver floats afar;
He weareth lotus-bloom and sweet heartsease,
With tassels of the rustling green fir trees,
As down the dusk he steps from star to star.

Above the world he swings his curfew bell,
And sleep falls soft on golden heads and white;
The daisies curl their leaves beneath his spell,
The prisoner who wearies in his cell
Forgets awhile, and dreams throughout the night.

*    *    *    *    *

Even so, in peace, comes that great Lord of rest
Who crowneth men...

Virna Sheard

Come Into The Garde, Maud

Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, Night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the roses blown.

For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
On a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.

All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd
To the dancers dancing in tune:
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.

I said to the lily, "There is but one
With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Merrill's Garden

There is a garden where the seeded stems of thin long grass are bowed
Beneath July's slow rains and heat and tired children's trailing feet;
And the trees' neglected branches droop and make a cloud beneath the cloud,
And in that dark the crimson dew of raspberries shines more sweet than sweet.

The flower of the tall acacia's gone, the acacia's flower is white no more,
The aspen lifts his pithless arms, the aspen leaves are close and still;
The wind that tossed the clouds along, gray clouds and white like feathers bore,
Lets even a feather faintly fall and smoke spread hugely where it will.

But though the acacia's flower is gone and raspberries bear bright fruit untasted,
Beauty lives there, oh rich and rare, past the sum of eager June.
The lime tree's pyramid of flower and leaf...

John Frederick Freeman

O Come To The Meadows.

O come to the meadows! I'll show you where
    Primrose and violet blow,
And the hawthorn spreads its blossoms fair,
    White as the driven snow.
I'll show you where the daisies dot
    With silver stars the lea,
The orchis, and forget-me-not,
    The flower of memory!

The gold-cup and the meadow-sweet,
    That love the river's side,
The reed that bows the wave to meet,
    And sighs above the tide.
The stately flag that gaily rears
    Aloft its yellow crest,
The lily in whose cup the tears
    Of morn delight to rest.

The first in Nature's dainty wreath,
    We'll cull the brier-rose,
The crowfoot and the purple heath,
    And pink that sweetly blows.
The hare-bell with its airy flowers
    Shall deck my Laura's breast,...

Susanna Moodie

The Garden

Bountiful Givers,
I look along the years
And see the flowers you threw...
Anemones
And sprigs of gray
Sparse heather of the rocks,
Or a wild violet
Or daisy of a daisied field...
But each your best.

I might have worn them on my breast
To wilt in the long day...
I might have stemmed them in a narrow vase
And watched each petal sallowing...
I might have held them so - mechanically -
Till the wind winnowed all the leaves
And left upon my hands
A little smear of dust.

Instead
I hid them in the soft warm loam
Of a dim shadowed place...
Deep
In a still cool grotto,
Lit only by the memories of stars
And the wide and luminous eyes
Of dead poets
That love me and that I love...
Deep... deep...
Where none...

Lola Ridge