Classic Garden Poetry

“On the motionless branches of some trees, autumn berries hung like clusters of coral beads,
as in those fabled orchards where the fruits were jewels . . .”
- Charles Dickens

"In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil. And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as from August to November."
- Rose G. Kingsley, The Autumn Garden, 1905

"Gardener’s , like everyone else, live second by second and minute by minute. What we see at one
particular moment is then and there before us. But there is a second way of seeing. Seeing with the
eye of memory, not the eye of our anatomy, calls up days and seasons past and years gone by."
- Allen Lacy, The Gardener’s Eye, 1992

My garden still has quite a bit of snow.
Waiting anxiously for spring to come.

Love,
Sue


"In the bleak mid winter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone, Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid winter of, Long ago."

Christina Rossetti



Artist: Robert Bateman

"Winter is in my head, but eternal spring is in my heart."

Victor Hugo

Garden Sanctuary
You who walk,
Maybe with troubled thoughts,
Come, enter here and rest;
And may the sweet serenity of growing things,
And the heavenly,peace
Be mirrored in they soul.

-Doxis M. Palmer

Winter is coming to an end and we can really enjoy a walk in the garden.

Our gardens are beginninbg to take on different shades.
The flowers of summer are giving way to the colours of autumn.



Count your garden by the flowers,
never by the leaves that fall.

Count your days by the golden hours,
don't remember the clouds at all.

Count your nights by the stars,
not by shadows.

Count your life with smiles not tears,
and with joy through all your life.

Count your age by friends not years.


Anonymous

You are right Sue, our gardens are taking on different shades.
I have quite a few Echinacea Purpurea, Purple Coneflowers, that start to bloom in the later part of summer, right into the fall. They make a definite transition in the seasons.



"The last of Summer is Delight --
Deterred by Retrospect.
'Tis Ecstasy's revealed Review --
Enchantment's Syndicate.

To meet it -- nameless as it is --
Without celestial Mail --
Audacious as without a Knock
To walk within the Veil."

- Emily Dickinson, The Last of Summer is Delight

"As Summer into Autumn slips
And yet we sooner say
"The Summer" than "the Autumn," lest
We turn the sun away,

And almost count it an Affront
The presence to concede
Of one however lovely, not
The one that we have loved --

So we evade the charge of Years
On one attempting shy
The Circumvention of the Shaft
Of Life's Declivity."

- Emily Dickinson, As Summer Into Autumn Slips

"T'is the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone."

- Thomas Moore, 1779-1852, The Last Rose of Summer

This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders.

~Sarah Orne Jewett

"Be like a flower and turn your face to the sun."




- Kahlil Gibran

Always remember the beauty of the garden, for there is peace.
- Author Unknown

My world, you were like a nerighbouring girl to me when I was a child, a stranger, timid in her love.
Then you grew bold and talked to me across the fence, offering to me your toys and flowers and shells.
You coaxed me away from my task, you tempted me into the land of mysteries at the weedy corner of some garden in the midday loneliness.
Then you told me stories of things that happened in an eternal past, which the present ever longs to meet, rescued from its prison of moments.

Rabindranath Tagore

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing: -"Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade.
~Rudyard Kipling, "The Glory of the Garden"

On a journey.
Resting beneath the cherry blossoms,
I feel myself to be in a Nõh play.

(Basho)



Love,
yoko

The springtime of Lovers has come,

that this dust bowl may become a garden;

the proclamation of heaven has come,

that the bird of the soul may rise in flight.

The sea becomes full of pearls,

the salt marsh becomes sweet as kauthar,

the stone becomes a ruby from the mine,

the body becomes wholly soul.

Rumi

“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.”

Dale Carnegie

“Footfalls echo in the memory, Down the passage which we did not take, Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden.”

T.S. Eliot quotes

Do the people around here put up with someone who is old, belligerent, cantankerous,
and negative about the way the country has gone to hell in a handbasket?

That's on my good days. Then add the fact I live in Louisiana and see what's happening to the people here.

Oh well. When you run me off you won't be getting a virgin.

anyway- It's worth a try to see if I have any common ground with anybody here. I like all the available topics I see on the board.

Everyone is very welcome on Givnology. It gives us all some inspiration and even relaxation. All things are peaceful here.

Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.


Enjoy the pots in the garden. We are starting to see late summer and autumn flowers.

Love,
Vicky

A sensitive plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
and closed them beneath the kisses of night.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Sensitive Plant," 1820

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

- William Blake
***************

I see a lot of these flowers in my garden, they almost grow wild.

Eccinacea

"In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and care and toil. And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as from August to November."
- Rose G. Kingsley, The Autumn Garden, 1905

Is it your face
that adorns the garden?
Is it your fragrance
that intoxicates this garden?
Is it your spirit
that has made this brook
a river of wine?

Rumi

In the garden
I see only your face
From trees and blossoms
I inhale only your fragrance.

Rumi

I am the garden of all gardens
I speak as the King of all flowers
I am the spring of all waters.
My words are like a ship and the sea
is their meaning.
Come to me and I will take you
to the depths of spirit.

Rumi

Summer is still here and our gardens are lovely, and so is dear Margherita's poem from another post

I’m open to love
my heart invites you to dance
come share my delight


senryu by Margherita

...Today
amid the scent
of new magnolia blossoms,

amid the rustling notes
of fresh stems bursting forth,

under the nectar-sprinkled moon rays
in the sky
in tearful delight,

by whose touch am I delighted
in this fragrance-laden agitated breeze?

Rabindranath Tagore

All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar.

Helen Hayes

"In my garden there is a large place for sentiment. My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful."
- Abram L. Urban

"When at last I took the time to look into the heart of a flower, it opened up a whole new world; a world where every country walk would be an adventure, where every garden would become an enchanted one."
- Princess Grace of Monaco

And still a Garden by the water blows...

The Rubayat of Omar Khayyam

"In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought
and care and toil. And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as
from August to November."

- Rose G. Kingsley, The Autumn Garden

"There ought to be gardens for all months in the year,
in which, severally, things of beauty may be then in season."
- Sir Francis Bacon
*********************

"My heart is a garden tired with autumn,
Heaped with bending asters and dahlias heavy and dark,
In the hazy sunshine, the garden remembers April,
The drench of rains and a snow-drop quick and clear as a spark;

Daffodils blowing in the cold wind of morning,
And golden tulips, goblets holding the rain --
The garden will be hushed with snow, forgotten soon, forgotten --
After the stillness, will spring come again?"

- Sara Teasdale, The Garden
*****************************

"I am the dust in the sunlight, I am the ball of the sun . . .
I am the mist of morning, the breath of evening . . . .
I am the spark in the stone, the gleam of gold in the metal . . . .
The rose and the nightingale drunk with its fragrance.
I am the chain of being, the circle of the spheres,
The scale of creation, the rise and the fall.
I am what is and is not . . .
I am the soul in all."

- Rumi

"In the assemblies of the enlightened ones there have been many cases of mastering the Way bringing forth the heart of plants and trees; this is what awakening the mind for enlightenment is like. The fifth patriarch of Zen was once a pine-planting wayfarer; Rinzai worked on planting cedars and pines on Mount Obaku. ... Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment."

- Dogen Zenji, Japanese Zen Buddhist Grand Master , Awakening the Unsurpassed Mind-

http://www.gardendigest.com/spirit.htm

"Japanese gardens ask that you go beyond the garden spiritually, that you look at the garden not merely as an object but also as a path into the realms of spirit."

- Makoto Ooka in The Temple in the House by Anthony Lawlor

What sprouts up every spring
will wither in autumn,
but the rose garden of Love
is always green.

- Rumi

The garden of love is green without limit
and yields many fruits other than sorrow or joy.
Love is beyond either condition:
without spring, without autumn, it is always fresh.

Rumi