Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/60

 THE DESERTED GARDEN

a village in a far-off land

Where from a sunny, mountain-girdled plain

With tinted walls a space on either hand

And fed by many an olive-darkened lane

The high-road mounts, and thence a silver band

Through vineyard slopes above and rolling grain,

Winds off to that dim corner of the skies

Where behind sunset hills a stately city lies.

Here, among trees whose overhanging shade

Strews petals on the little droves below,

Pattering townward in the morning weighed

With greens from many an upland garden-row,

Runs an old wall; long centuries have frayed

Its scalloped edge, and passers to and fro

Heard never from beyond its crumbling height

Sweet laughter ring at noon or plaintive song at night.

But here where little lizards bask and blink

The tendrils of the trumpet-vine have run,

At whose red bells the humming bird to drink

Stops oft before his garden feast is done;

And rose-geraniums, with that tender pink

That cloud-banks borrow from the setting sun,

Have covered part of this old wall, entwined

With fair plumbago, blue as evening heavens behind.

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