Wild Garden

This is a garden wild and sweet, Where gray-mossed ledges lie out in the sun Amid scented fern in the August heat, On the mountain side where lone trails run Through splashes of aster and goldenrod In clearings sown by the hand of God.

Here we pass with moccasined tread In the friendship of earth, through the glory of morn, With the lore of the learned little read, To the gladness and wisdom of love free-born, Wild hearts beating and hushed before The lowered bars and the Open Door.

The sunlight sleeps on the purple hill, The world is a-dream in dim blue haze, Even the poplar leaves are still, As if aware of a day of days Vouchsafed the creatures of earth to employ In the wonder of life, in the fulness of joy.

The maple leaves are beginning to turn To scarlet and gold, the victorious hues. The topmost summits in splendor burn To signal the world their mystic news, The gospel of beauty that will survive The clamorous doubts of all alive.

For what is the sacrament sense receives, When the new moon hangs in the purple pine And silence speaks and the heart believes, But a portal that leads to the inner shrine? And our hermit thrush at his evening psalm Is celebrant of that holy calm.

Here radiant pilgrims have smiled and passed, The seed of Shamballah, the angels of Earth, Swayed by the breath of a heavenly vast, In lovely ardor and fadeless worth, For Love is Lord of the Seraphim And heaven and earth are one to him.