The Seed-Shop

Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie,

Faded as crumbled stone and shifting sand,

Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry-

Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

Dead that shall quicken at the voice of spring,

Sleepers to wake beneath June's tempest kiss;

Though birds pass over, unremembering,

And no bee find here roses that were his.

In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams;

A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust

That shall drink deeply at a century's streams;

These lilies shall make summer on my dust.

Here in their safe and simple house of death,

Sealed in their shells, a million roses leap;

Here I can stir a garden with my breath,

And in my hand a forest lies asleep.