Muriel Stuart

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.