A Garden in Venice
There is a garden in a vineyard set
Beneath the spell of Adriatic skies;
A lovely place of dreams and ecstasies,
Of color tangled in a verdant net,
The shimmer of the low lagoon whose fret
Washes the garden’s length, and rose that vies
With rose, pomegranate and tall flowers that rise
Above their fellows in one glory met.
And there I think in the still summer night,
When all the world is sleeping save the moon
And the blest nightingale who shuns the noon,
The closed flowers open out of sheer delight
And the white lilies bow their slender stalks,
For thro’ them, ’neath the vines Madonna walks.
Dorothy Frances Gurney