Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WILD EDEN, by GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WILD EDEN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: There is a garden enclosed / in the high places
Last Line: Fly to wild eden!
Subject(s): Gardens & Gardening


THERE is a garden enclosed
In the high places,
But never hath love reposed
In its bowery spaces;
And the cedars there like shadows
O'er the moonlit champaign stand
Till light like an angel's hand
Touches Wild Eden.

Who told me the name of the garden
That lieth remote, apart,
I know not, nor whence was the music
That sang it into my heart;
But just as the loud robin tosses
His notes from the elm tops high,
As the violets come in the mosses
When south winds wake and sigh,
So on my lips I found it,
This name that is made my cry.

There, under the stars and the dawns
Of the virginal valleys,
White lilies flood the low lawns
And the rose lights the alleys;
But never are heard there the voices
That sweeten on lovers' lips,
And the wild bee never sips
Sweets of Wild Eden.

But who hath shown me the vision
Of the roses and lilies in ranks
I would that I knew, that forever
To him I might render thanks;
For a maiden grows there in her blossom,
In the place of her maidenhood,
Nor knows how her virgin bosom
Is stored with the giving of good,
For the truth is hidden from her
That of love is understood.

No bird with his mate there hovers,
Nor beside her has trilled or sung;
No bird in the dewy covers
Has built a nest for his young;
And over the dark-leaved mountains
The voice in the laurel sleeps;
And the moon broods on the deeps
Shut in Wild Eden.

O Love, if thou in thy hiding
Art he who above me stands,
If thou givest wings to my spirit,
If thou art my heart and my hands —
Through the morn, through the noon, through the even
That burns with thy planet of light,
Through the moonlit space of heaven,
Guide thou my flight
Till, star-like on the dark garden,
I fall in the night!

Fly, song of my bosom, unto it
Wherever the earth breathes spring;
Though a thousand years were to rue it,
Such a heart beats under thy wing,
Thou shalt dive, thou shalt soar, thou shalt find it,
And forever my life be blest,
Such a heart beats in my breast —
Fly to Wild Eden!





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