# Littell's Living Age/Volume 135/Issue 1744/The Deserted Garden

* THE DESERTED GARDEN.
* Beyond the woods, yet half by woods inclosed,
* A tangled wilderness of fair growth lay;
* A spot where dreaming poet might have dozed
* Into the dawning of a fairy day;
* For in its desolation wild reposed
* Something that pointed to a past more gay,
* Since here and there one found the lingering trace
* Of caresome hands in the neglected place.
* The once trim walks were coated thick with moss;
* Dwarfed were the garden roses, and their glow
* From vivid crimson paled to fainter gloss
* Nigh broken sun-dial; and the water's flow
* Had ceased to murmur in the ancient foss,
* Whose slopes were now with purple thyme a-blow;
* And on the fragments of the crumbled wall
* The golden wall-flower stood like seneschal.
* The nut-trees made an archway overgrown,
* And midst the boughs the timid squirrel leapt;
* At eve the nightingale with mellow tone
* Sang with the mourning wind a dirge that crept
* Into all hearts - until one heart more lone
* Than others, gathered up the strain and wept;
* Nor knew if 'twere half joy or wholly grief
* That in the sympathetic chord had found relief.
* The clouds sent flickering shadows o'er the grass,
* As though some spectral life were there up-stirred;
* And as the fitful breezes onward pass,
* A murmur cf strange voices might be heard,
* As though some unseen quire were chanting mass,
* Echoed throughout the grove by plaintive bird;
* And still the wanderer listening, asks for whom
* The wild amen; For whom the flowers did bloom.
* The ancient summer-house with broken vane,
* And rotting pillars where the woodbines twine;
* And on a cobwebbed solitary pane
* In casement, that with colors once did shine,
* And shewed the seasons through each differing stain,
* Was writ in jagged-wise a Latin line,
* " Sic transit gloria mundi;" and below,
* "My Ursula! the world is full of woe."
* It read as epitaph above the grave
* Of human hopes, all blighted as the space
* Around, whose wreck no hand was stretched to save;
* Yet that with tender, melancholy grace,
* A sermon in that blooming desert gave
* To him whose soul had power enough to trace
* In the lone scene, so desolate, so lone,
* Though man upbuilds, God shapes the crowning stone.
* I spake the name a score of times aloud,
* "Sweet Ursula," a source of joy and woe!
* The glory of a life, the light allowed
* To make all nature flush with deeper glow.
* Then light put out — then darkness — then a cloud
* And agony that nought but love can know —
* The bitter memory of a sweetness past,
* A gleam of sunshine all too bright to last.
* The lazy lilies gleamed with petals white
* Upon the pool o'errun with weeds and sedges,
* That once shone clear and fair as mirror bright,
* With blue forget-me-nots on shelving ledges,
* Where water-flags upreared their banners light,
* And the marsh-mallow crept along its edges —
* But in the water face to face no more
* Smiled back as in the happier days of yore.
* Ah! could the olden stones a story tell,
* How sweet a love-tale might they not reveal
* Of mystic Ursula, and what befell
* In the fond hopes and doubts that lovers feel,
* Till blighted by that sorrowful farewell
* That all the beauty of the world did steal;
* Shattered the rainbow in fresh-gathered cloud,
* And changed the bridal robe to funeral shroud.
* Perchance her monument this wildered spot,
* Tended by Nature's pitying hand alone,
* For one by generations now forgot,
* To whom he reared no proud sepulchral stone;
* But with love's jealousy he willed that not
* Another o'er her grave should make his moan,
* But he alone through hieroglyphic bloom,
* Should haunt the precincts of the loved one's tomb.
* Ay, who can tell! For time his seal hath set
* On life and all its secrets gone before;
* The hearts are dead that never could forget;
* The hearts that live, but know the tale no more.
* Each hath its bitterness o'er which to fret,
* Each hath its joys eclipsing those of yore;
* To each its own small world the real seems,
* Outside of which is but a land of dreams.
* Yet still one loves to linger here and muse,
* And conjure up vague theories of the past;
* And here a hand to trace; and there to lose
* The touch of human life upon it cast;
* And still for idle loitering make excuse,
* And weave a tale of mystery to the last;
* And in the old deserted garden bowers
* Find fairer blossoms than 'mongst tended flowers.
* Chambers' Journal.Julia Goddard.