Category: Haunted Gardens

The Haunted Garden by Madison Julius Cawein

There a tattered marigold
And dead asters manifold,
Showed him where the garden old
Of time bloomed:
Briar and thistle overgrew
Corners where the rose once blew,
Where the phlox of every hue
Lay entombed.

Here a coreopsis flower
Pushed its disc above a bower,
Where once poured a starry shower,
Bronze and gold:
And a twisted hollyhock,
And the remnant of a stock,
Struggled up, ‘mid burr and dock,
Through the mold.

Flower-pots, with mossy cloak,
Strewed a place beneath an oak,
Where the garden-bench lay broke
By the tree:
And he thought of her, who here
Sat with him but yesteryear;
Her, whose presence now seemed near
Stealthily.

And the garden seemed to look
For her coming. Petals shook
On the spot where, with her book,
Oft she sat.—
Suddenly there blew a wind:
And across the garden blind,
Like a black thought in a mind,
Stole a cat.

Lean as hunger; like the shade
Of a dream; a ghost unlaid;
Through the weeds its way it made,
Gaunt and old:
Once ’t was hers. He looked to see
If she followed to the tree.—
Then recalled how long since she
Had been mold.

Haunted by Louis Untermeyer

 

Between the moss and stone

The lonely lilies rise;

Wasted and overgrown

The tangled garden lies.

Weeds climb about the stoop

And clutch the crumbling walls;

The drowsy grasses droop—

The night wind falls.

The place is like a wood;

No sign is there to tell

Where rose and iris stood

That once she loved so well.

Where phlox and asters grew,

A leafless thornbush stands,

And shrubs that never knew

Her tender hands….

Over the broken fence

The moonbeams trail their shrouds;

Their tattered cerements

Cling to the gauzy clouds,

In ribbons frayed and thin—

And startled by the light

Silence shrinks deeper in

The depths of night.

Useless lie spades and rakes;

Rust’s on the garden-tools.

Yet, where the moonlight makes

Nebulous silver pools

A ghostly shape is cast—

Something unseen has stirred….

Was it a breeze that passed?

Was it a bird?

Dead roses lift their heads

Out of a grassy tomb;

From ruined pansy-beds

A thousand pansies bloom.

The gate is opened wide—

The garden that has been

Now blossoms like a bride….

Who entered in?

Haunted Garden by Robin Hyde

The primulas are scanted of colour here,
They are as young lips knowing too little of love;
And the dusky weight of the laurel boughs above
Is a stern crown plaited for young brows lessoned in care.
Yea, and the scarlet shallop anemones
Bend in the wind for the warm white lute-string beach,
For the Orphic meadows no longing of mine can reach,
Who am prisoner here in the warded house of the trees.

But the small white poisonous flowers crumble into my days,
And the steel-bright arc of the fountain-drops pierces my heart.
I am as one who stumbles the yew-tree maze,
Where ever dreamer and dream are thrust further apart,
Till the little pools of starlight shine chill with danger,
Till the breath of the earth is a rising pearl-white smoke,
And he dare not stretch forth his hand, to touch the cloak
Of her who waits by the fountain, the motionless stranger.

And dusk is a statue, and thought is a chrysophrase set
Bleak on a brow half-seen through the leaning blue trees;
And the frail eve weighted by robes of sarcenet
Rests her sceptre of dreaming across her knees.
Heavy her spell upon heart, upon outstretched hands —
Only the ghost-world’s silver freights again
The barren orchard with blossom, limns the tall standing grain,
The watchful glistening spears of enchanted lands.