THE trampling armies leave discomforted How many a garden! Desolate and dead The shining flowers whose soul breathed up to God In winsome odors from the quiet sod. Where the rose laughed, the dark ensanguined mire, And where the birds in many a leafy choir Greeted the sun, the cannon and the shell Have changed an Eden to a shrieking hell. No lilies left that erst rose tall and white, Nor tulips proud a-blow, nor that fair sight, The pansies of the many-winking eyes; Ah, blight for bloom and rain for tranquil skies! Of old, how often lovers kept a tryst In such hid haunts, how tenderly they kissed; But love is now turned hate, the very grass Is color-changed with blood of those who pass. Lovers and birds alike have fled the place, The writhen body and the upturned face Know naught of love or song or carefree hours That blessed the alleys of these blameless flowers. O refuges so rifled and so dim Of color, what to you the martial hymn! How sweet you were where now the battle raves, O desolated gardens, with your graves! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ELEGY ON MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE by WILLIAM BASSE SANTORIN (A LEGEND OF THE AEGEAN) by JAMES ELROY FLECKER THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES; THE 10TH SATIRE OF JUVENAL, IMITATED by SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784) FLOWERS WITHOUT FRUIT by JOHN HENRY NEWMAN ON AN ANNIVERSARY by JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE THE WORLD'S TRIUMPHS by MATTHEW ARNOLD WHEN LOVE GROWS COLD by LUMAN R. BOWDISH |