INSTRUCTION by JOHN DRINKWATER

I HAVE a place in a little garden,
That laurel-leaf and fern
Keep a cool place though fires of summer
All the green grasses burn.
Little cool winds creep there about
When winds all else are dead,
And tired limbs there find gentle keeping,
And humours of sloth are shed.

So do your songs come always to me,
Poets of age and age,
Clear and cool as rivers of wind
Threading my hermitage,
Stilling my mind from tribulation
Of life half-seen, half-heard,
With images made in the brain's quietness,
And the leaping of a word.

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