Middleton Garden

This is a garden where the Son of Heaven Well might walk, With all his dragon-broidered mandarins, To the plucked sound of tenor instruments, With peacocks, kites, and little red balloons, Mirrored with incense and rice-paper lights, And old bronze lanterns on the full moon nights, Upon the lacquered, porcelain-pink lagoons.

If cardinals in sun-blood robes were here To kiss the ring of gorgeous Borgia popes; Or bold de Gama's loot from Malabar: Topaz and ruby, chrysolite and beryl, The golden idol with a thousand hands, And ropes of pearl; They would seem lesser than these flowers are, Whose masculine magnificence makes riches pale.

And yet with all its oriental hue There is a touch of Holland, Of canals at Loo, Where Orange William planned a boxwood maze. The house has Flemish curves upon its eaves; Its doorways yearn for buckle-shoed young bloods, Smoking clay pipes, with lace a-droop from sleeves-- Moonlight on terraces is like a story told By sleepy link-boys 'round old sedan chairs In days when tulip bulbs were gold.

The faint, crisp rustle of magnolia leaves Rasps with the crackling scratch of old brocade, The low bird-voices ripple like the laugh Of Watteau beauties coiffured, with pomade; Here ribboned dandies offered scented snuffs To other ghosts, beneath the giant trees-- Was that a flash of rose-flamingo stuffs-- Azaleas?--was a sneeze blown down the breeze?

This terrace is a stage set by the years, Fit for the pageants of the centuries; That fire-scarred ruin marks an act of tears-- Charm is more winsome coped with tragedies. Here flaunted tilted hats and crinolines, Small parasols, hoopskirts, and bombazines, When turbaned slaves walked dykes in single file, And rice-fields made horizons, otherwhile.

All, all has passed, but change, Gnawed by the rat-like teeth of avid years, The masters, through the door, to mysteries Beyond blind panels 'mid the moss-scarved trees, Uncanny gates, where negroes faintly bold, At high noon in the tide of summer heat, Stand in the draught of tomb-air deathly cold That flows like glacial water 'round their feet.

H.A.