A Sun-Dial In A Garden

________________________________________________
Title:     A Sun-Dial In A Garden
Author: John Presland [More Titles by Presland]

Across the quiet garden sunlight flows
In wave on wave like water, heavy bees
Hang drowsily upon the drowsy flowers,
For it is very still, and all the trees
Are pyramided high in green and gold.
There is a sun-dial there to mark the hours
Where time is not, where time has grown so old
It does not move now; yet the shadow goes
Across the dial that's so warm to feel
Like a cold, stealthy, creeping, living thing.
You cannot see it steal
Minute from minute of the golden day
Till all are eaten away,
You cannot press it back with both your hands,
And, on the shadowed stone
Laying your cheek, you never warmth can bring
To what beneath the sad triangle stands,
Solitary in sunlight: for we know,
It takes the whole great swinging earth to throw
The little shadow on the little stone.

[The end]
John Presland's poem: Sun-Dial In A Garden

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN