Poems (Forrest)/Dream gardens

DREAM GARDENS

I shall dream gardens wherever I sleep!
If Chance make my bed in the open sea
I shall dream gardens, wherever I be
On the shifting sands where the samphires creep.

In the wash of waters by cape and rock
Or an islet fringed with a coral reef
I shall find a pleasance of bloom and leaf,
A wild red rose and a milk-white stock.

Violets, like those you used to bring,
Lilies, pale gold for a golden bee—
I shall plan a hive 'neath the tumbling sea
For brown striped body and gauzy wing.

For I must have bees in my mignonette.
When I find wide beds of it in the blue,
With dusty helmets where sun soaks through,
The flowers you tended will not forget!

I shall grow dream gardens wherever I sleep.
Though they shape my couch of a cold grey stone
And carve a cross where I lie alone,
There will be a chink where the grasses peep.

And the scattered buds of a wind-torn tree,
Bauhinia, bright as butterfly.
Till a page will turn in a sunlit sky
And I read the blossoms that used to be.

In the crumbling clay, when the light has gone,
I shall build me towers where the tall palm stands;
I shall fill with myrtles my hungry hands
From the hanging gardens of Babylon.

In wandering ocean, in earth-ditch deep
I shall see green grass and the poppies blow.
I may fail of Heaven; but this I know,
God will plant gardens through all my sleep!