The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar/In An English Garden

IN AN ENGLISH GARDEN

In this old garden, fair, I walk to-day Heart-charmed with all the beauty of the scene: The rich, luxuriant grasses' cooling green, The wall's environ, ivy-decked and gray, The waving branches with the wind at play, The slight and tremulous blooms that show between, Sweet all: and yet my yearning heart doth lean Toward Love's Egyptian fleshpots far away.

Beside the wall, the slim Laburnum grows And flings its golden flow'rs to every breeze. But e'en among such soothing sights as these, I pant and nurse my soul-devouring woes. Of all the longings that our hearts wot of, There is no hunger like the want of love!