A foxglove lifts her bells and bells silent above the singing grass,
Still the old marigold her light sprinkles like riches to the poor. 
Snapdragon still his changeling blossom shakes with the burden of the bees,
And the strong bindweed creeps and winds and springs on high a conqueror.

* * * * *

Would now her eyes grieve to behold snapdragon, foxglove, marigold
Daily diminish in their sweet and bindweed wreathing over all—­
Weed and grass and weed and grass, friendless, melancholy, cold,
Wreathing the earth like wreathing snow from bare wall to low greening
    wall?

Old were her eyes that lingered on old trees and grass and flowers trim. 
She smelt the ripe pears when they drooped and fell and broke upon the
    path. 
Old were her thoughts of things of old; her present thoughts were few and
    dim;
Her eyes saw not the things she saw; she listened, to no living breath.

Her youth and prime and autumn time bloomed in her thought all light and
    sweet: 
No wallflower more of sweet could hold, of sunny light no marigold. 
Fruit on her mind’s boughs ripened full, in summer’s and calm autumn’s
    heat: 
Then fell, for there came none to pick; but winter came, and she was old.

Now if her sons come they will find—­not her:  her empty garden only,
The wallflower done and snapdragon still swinging with the greedy bees,
Marigold glittering in the grass, scant foxglove ringing faintly, lonely,
Close red fruit beading the long boughs and bindweed wreathing where it
    please.

A tawny lean cat Marmalade slinks like a panther through the tall
Thin bending grass and watches long a scholar thrush rehearsing song;
Or children running in the sun hunt and hunt a well lost ball;
But most the garden sleeps away the day, but still, when eves are long,

When eves are long and no moon rises, and nervous, still, is all the air,
That small stiff figure moves again, silent amid the hushing grass;
In the firm-carven lime tree’s shade she moves, and meets her old thoughts
    there,
Then in the deepening dark is lost, or her light steps unnoted pass.

Only that careless garden keeps secure her memory though it sleeps,
And the bright flowers and tyrant weed and tall grass shaking its loud seed
Less lovely were if wanting her who like a living thought still creeps
And sees what once she saw and music hears of her living sons and dead.

THE LIME TREE

That lime tree on the distant rising ground
(If it was a lime tree) showed her yellow leaves
Above the renewed green of wet August grass—­
First Autumn yellow that on first Autumn eves
        Too soon was found.

Comfortless lime tree!  Scarce an aspen leaf
Like a green butterfly flitted to the ground;
There was no sign of Autumn in the grass. 
Even the long garden beds their beauty brief—­
        Their mignonette,