Behind a Wall by Amy Lowell — Read

I own a solace shut within my heart, / A garden full of many a quaint delight / And warm with drowsy, poppied sunshine; bright, / Flaming with lilies out of whose cups dart / Shining things / With powdered wings.

Here terrace sinks to terrace, arbors close / The ends of dreaming paths; a wanton wind / Jostles the half-ripe pears, and then, unkind, / Tumbles a-slumber in a pillar rose, / With content / Grown indolent.

By night my garden is o'erhung with gems / Fixed in an onyx setting. Fireflies / Flicker their lanterns in my dazzled eyes.

In serried rows I guess the straight, stiff stems / Of hollyhocks / Against the rocks.

So far and still it is that, listening, / I hear the flowers talking in the dawn; / And where a sunken basin cuts the lawn, / Cinctured with iris, pale and glistening, / The sudden swish / Of a waking fish.