Poems — Sonnet - My Heart Will Be Thy Garden

TO W.

M.

_Most of these verses were written in the author's early youth, and were published in a volume called 'Preludes,' now out of print.

Other poems, representing the same transitory and early thoughts, which appeared in that volume, are now omitted as cruder than the rest; and their place is taken by the few verses written in maturer years_.

SONNET--MY HEART SHALL BE THY GARDEN

My heart shall be thy garden.

Come, my own, Into thy garden; thine be happy hours Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers, From root to crowning petal, thine alone.

Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers.

But ah, the birds, the birds!

Who shall build bowers To keep these thine?

O friend, the birds have flown.

For as these come and go, and quit our pine To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers, Sing one song only from our alder-trees.