Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HER GARDEN; IN MEMORY OF NELLIE SIDDENS BURKE, by EDITH W. L. FORBES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HER GARDEN; IN MEMORY OF NELLIE SIDDENS BURKE, by                    
First Line: Now as the spring
Last Line: Now in the spring.
Subject(s): Birds; Gardens & Gardening; Love


In Memory of Nellie Siddens Burke
Now as the spring
Calls to the birds she loved to build and sing,
And the bedraggled snowbanks disappear,
Into her garden where each vivid spear
Hints of the waking life of bulb and root,
Her hands have set and tended; leaf and shoot
Of crocus, scilla, fern, their tips uprear,
As if to greet her presence; can we bear
To come, nor find her there?

Here in the spring
She used to set the water and the food;
Cooked eggs to feed the robins' scrawny brood;
Apples and crumbs and suet on the tree
For shy nuthatch and joyous chickadee.
Each timid thing she blessed by minist'ring,
Feeling the pain of sick or tortured beast,
Giving herself to serve the very least.
Never a wasted moment in her life,
Never a moment given up to strife,
Nor idle gossip, always love and cheer
For any that drew near.

Now in the spring
These bitter tears we weep are not new tears
For any strange new grief. Remembering
Tears of the ages that have flowed at death
Since in the human form man first drew breath
We know the great companionship of grief.
Such tears have been ere Tyre and Babylon,
And older nations long forgot and gone,
Were changed into the desert's drifting sand.
O, gardens, gardens of the long ago!
How tenderly your fragrant flowers glow
Down the dead years when the footsteps of spring
Bring old, lost pain to fresh awakening!
Not all the rivers flowing through the land
To meet the sea can equal in their flow
Tears that have fallen for this same keen woe
Since life began, bringing a sweet relief
To stricken hearts beside their silent dead:
Day after day, hour after hour shed;
This is old grief we know.

Now in the spring
Into her garden come and feel how near
She seems, who loved to work and worship here.
And bravely bring to meet an age-old woe
An age-old strength that will not let us know
Hopelessness, loneliness, and sorrowing.
Shall we not be as they were, comforted?
Shall we not bear as well our suffering
As they all down the ages who have trod
This path we tread, that points the soul to God?
Rachael, and Mary kneeling at the cross,
And countless nameless ones who wept a loss
As keen as this it seems we cannot bear.
Lo, everyone is called this grief to share!
None can escape, such tears all hearts have wept
Above their dearest ones who calmly slept
As she seems sleeping in her quiet place
The light of Heaven on her gentle face,
While on the bough returning robins sing --
Now in the spring.





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