The Garden of Her Soul

My love has a garden,
A garden in her soul.
And I ask no pardon
For making spirits roll
When I speak of the flowers
That grow there in gray hours.

My love's garden is dark,
Dark as a day of rain.
Sunlight gives a faint spark
To the sky's glass pane.
But the flowers flourish there:
White, sweet-scented, and weirdly fair.

My love has a garden,
A garden in her heart.
And I ask no pardon
For taking up the art
Of description of its powers,
That garden of pale ghastly flowers.

The paths twine out of sight,
Overwhelmed by the trees
That droop clad with leaves of light
Which rustle in the breeze:
The leaves are blossoms of the blooms
That make the air uneasy with perfumes.

My love has a garden,
A garden in her mind.
And I ask no pardon
For the path I cannot find
To speak to her of its hidden bowers,
Hidden by the ghostly shapes of flowers.

I cannot find or seek
The path to those bowers.
Every time that I would speak
She hides them with those flowers,
The flowers that, pale, mask everything,
And strangle the love songs I would sing.