A Roman Garden
All night above that garden the rose-flushed moon will sail,
Making the darkness deeper where hides the nightingale.
Below the Sabine mountain
The tossed and slender fountain
Will curve, a lily pale;
And where the plumed pine soars tallest,
’Tis there, O nightingale, thou callest;
Where the loud water leaps the highest.
’Tis there, O nightingale, thou criest;
In the dripping luscious dark,
Hark, oh, hark!
Wonderful, delirious,
Soul of joy mysterious.
A garden full of fragrances,
Of pauses and of cadences,
Whence come they all?
Of cypresses and ilex-trees,
Plumes and dark candles like to these
Were long ago Persephone’s.
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