All night within that garden The glimmering gods of stone, The satyrs and the naiads Will laugh to be alone, In starless courts of shadows By silence overgrown, Save for the nightingale's Wild lyric thither blown. By pools and dusky closes Dim shapes will move about, Twirled wands and masks and faces, Dancers and wreaths of roses, The moonlight's trick, no doubt. A naked nymph upon the stair, A sculptured vine that clasps the air,-- And then one Bacchic bird somewhere Will pour his passion out. All night above that garden the rose-flushed moon will sail, Making the darkness deeper where hides the nightingale. Down yonder velvet alley, Floats Daphne like a feather, A finger bidding silence, The dark and she together. Look, where the secret fount is misting. Apollo, thou shalt have thy trysting: For where a ruined sphinx lay smiling The wood-girl waits thee, white, beguiling. All night above that garden the rose-flushed moon will sail, Making the darkness deeper where hides the nightingale. FLORENCE WILKINSON EVANS COMO IN APRIL The wind is Winter, though the sun be Spring: The icy rills have scarce begun to flow; The birds unconfidently fly and sing. As on the land once fell the northern foe, The hostile mountains from the passes fling Their vandal blasts upon the lake below. Not yet the round clouds of the Maytime cling Above the world's blue wonder's curving show, And tempt to linger with their lingering. Yet doth each slope a vernal promise know: See, mounting yonder, white as angel's wing. A snow of bloom to meet the bloom of snow. * * * * * Love, need we more than our imagining To make the whole year May? What though The wind be Winter if the heart be Spring? ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON AN EXILE'S GARDEN I live in the heart of a garden With cypresses all about; To the east and west, and the south and north, Straight shadowy paths run out. There are ancient gods in my garden; They have faces young and pale; And a hundred thousand roses here Enrapture the nightingale. Yet, among the gods of the garden, The roses and gods, I think, Daylong, of a far-off clover field, And the song of a bob-o-link. SOPHIE JEWETT THE CLOISTER GARDEN AT CERTOSA It is a place monastic, set above The city's pride and pleasuring below; The benediction of the sky breathes love Over the olive trees and vines a-row. The old gray walls are delicate to prayer And silence; in the corridors dim-lit Lurks many a painting, many a fresco rare Done by some brother for the joy of it.