Read "New College Gardens, Oxford" by Edith Nesbit online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
On this old lawn, where lost hours pass / Across the shadows dark with dew, / Where autumn on the thick sweet grass / Has laid a weary leaf or two, / When the young morning, keenly sweet, / Breathes secrets to the silent air, / Happy is he whose lingering feet / May wander lonely there.
The enchantment of the dreaming limes, / The magic of the quiet hours, / Breathe unheard tales of other times / And other destinies than ours; / The feet that long ago walked here / Still, noiseless, walk beside our feet, / Poor ghosts, who found this garden dear, / And found the morning sweet!
Age weeps that it no more may hold / The heart-ache that youth clasps so close, / Pain finely shaped in pleasure's mould, / A thorn deep hidden in a rose.
Here is the immortal thorny rose / That may in no new garden grow -- / Its root is in the hearts of those / Who walked here long ago.