Where in the secret gardens
That your old red walls confine,
Where in your cloistered richness
Is a border gay as mine?
Are your dreaming windless flowers
Standing so still and straight,
As lovely as that wild border
That grows at the starting gate?
Or the grass that waits the petals
Of their sweet withering,
Greener than the green alley
That waits my blossoming?
Poppy and pink and lupin,
Lavender, iris rose -
The fairest flowers that ever
Were grown are surely those
That riot a few brave minutes,
A thousand blooms in one,
Behind the high taut webbing,
That flame, and flash, and are gone.
And after - ? You say: 'The border
Was lovely in '28.'
But I have perpetual borders
That grow at the starting gate.
Josephine Tey
'My lot is cast in inland places,
Far from sounding beach
And crying gull,
And I
Who knew the sea's voice from my babyhood
Must listen to a river purling
Through green fields,
And small birds gossiping
Among the leaves.'
Josephine Tey
