The chestnut trees in Bushey Park are lit This year as always since the spring knows naught Of war and death, and still the shadows flit Across the dappled grass and burnish it. And still at night the moon in stately sort Is tranquil with the avenues, and lights The sleeping palace, as on other nights Of springs long past; but searching for the rose In vain, the dawn a little whisper knows: “Where are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?” Two years ago when all the trees were green The old red walls were unto to summer brought, By joyous bands of lilies and the lean Daffodils danced before or ran between. Where are they gone these blooms of good report? And where the lad and where the laughing maid Who came to wonder and to love who stayed? For a lost flower is a little thing But a lost lover is the end of spring. “Where are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?” Ah! spring these flowers are growing otherwhere, In a new soil a changing radiance taught, Born of the soul and nourished of the air, Sweeter though scentless and unseen more fair. Where are they gone these blooms of good report? Is it perhaps that where the Tigris flows There blooms an unaccustomed English rose? And where the guns have killed the spring in France The English lilies break a silver lance? “Where are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?” If thus the flowers, where are those who here Themselves fresh flowers with the springtime fraught, Saw the first leaves in Bushey Park appear The dead swept leaves the leaves of yesteryear? Where are they gone those lads of good report? It may be they are sleeping; it may be Strange lands have taken them or a strange sea. But wheresoever in the world they lie An English voice till that world ends will cry “Here are the flowers that were at Hampton Court?” _Printed at The Vincent Works, Oxford._ End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of London Sonnets, by Humbert Wolfe