| There’s an ancient, ancient garden
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| That I see sometimes in dreams
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| Where the very Maytime sunlight plays
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| And glows with spectral gleams
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| Where the gaudy-tinted blossoms
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| Seem to wither into grey
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| And the crumbling walls and pillars
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| Waken thoughts of yesterday
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| There are vines in nooks and crannies
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| And there’s moss about the pool
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| And the tangled weedy thicket
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| Chokes the arbour dark and cool:
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| In the silent sunken pathways
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| Springs an herbage sparse and spare
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| Where the musty scent of dead things
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| Dulls the fragrance of the air
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| There is not a living creature
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| In the lonely space around
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| And the hedge-encompass'd quiet
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| Never echoes to a sound
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| As I walk, and wait, and listen
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| I will often seek to find
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| When it was I knew that garden
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| In an age long left behind
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| I will oft conjure a vision
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| Of a day that is no more
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| As I gaze upon the grey, grey scenes
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| I feel I knew before
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| Then a sadness settles o’er me
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| And a tremor seems to start:
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| For I know the flow’rs are shrivell’d hopes—
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| The garden is my heart! |