The Garden

My heart is a garden tired with autumn,

Heaped with bending asters and dahlias heavy and dark,

In the hazy sunshine, the garden remembers April,

The drench of rains and a snow-drop quick and clear as a spark;

Daffodils blowing in the cold wind of morning,

And golden tulips, goblets holding the rain --

The garden will be hushed with snow, forgotten soon, forgotten --

After the stillness, will spring come again?

Waking up Midlife

A Daughter of Eve

A FOOL I was to sleep at noon,

And wake when night is chilly

Beneath the comfortless cold moon;

A fool to pluck my rose too soon,

A fool to snap my lily.

My garden-plot I have not kept;

Faded and all-forsaken,

I weep as I have never wept:

Oh it was summer when I slept,

It's winter now I waken.

Talk what you please of future spring

And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:

Stripp'd bare of hope and everything,

No more to laugh, no more to sing,

I sit alone with sorrow.

Christina Rossetti