No One Can Rightly Call His Garden

My Virgin Sense Of Sound Was Steeped In The Music Of Young Streams; And Roses Through The Casement Peeped, And Scented All My Dreams.

Never Did Form More Fairy Thread The Dance Than She Who Scours The Hills To Find It Flowers; Never Did Sweeter Lips Chained Ears Entrance Than Hers That Move, True To Its Striking Hours; No Hands So White E'er Decked The Warrior's Lance, As Those Which Tend Its Lamp As Darkness Lours; And Never Since Dear Christ Expired For Man, Had Holy Shrine So Fair A Sacristan.

Thought, Stumbling, Plods Past Fallen Temples, Vanished Gods, Altars Unincensed, Fanes Undecked, Eternal Systems Flown Or Wrecked; Through Trackless Centuries That Grant To The Poor Trudge Refreshment Scant, Age After Age, Pants On To Find A Melting Mirage Of The Mind.

Is Life Worth Living? Yes, So Long As There Is Wrong To Right. So Long As Faith With Freedom Reigns And Loyal Hope Survives, And Gracious Charity Remains To Leaven Lowly Lives; While There Is Only One Untrodden Tract For Intellect Or Will, And Men Are Free To Think And Act, Life Is Worth Living Still.

Through The Dripping Weeks That Follow One Another Slow, And Soak Summer's Extinguished Fire And Autumn's Drifting Smoke.