Speak not -- whisper not; Here bloweth thyme and bergamot; Softly on the evening hour, Secret herbs their spices shower. Dark-spiked rosemary and myrrh, Lean-stalked, purple lavender; Hides within her bosom, too, All her sorrows, bitter rue. Breathe not -- trespass not; Of this green and darkling spot, Latticed from the moon's beams, Perchance a distant dreamer dreams; Perchance upon its darkening air, The unseen ghosts of children fare, Faintly swinging, sway and sweep, Like lovely sea-flowers in [its]1 deep; While, unmoved, to watch and ward, Amid its gloomed and daisied sward, Stands with bowed and dewy head That one little leaden Lad.
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View original text (without footnotes)Confirmed with Collected Poems 1901-1918 by Walter De la Mare, Volume I, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920, page 167, in Motley: 1919.
1 Bartlett: "the"Text Authorship:
- by Walter De la Mare (1873 - 1956), "The Sunken Garden", written 1919, appears in The Sunken Garden and Other Poems [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by John Bartlett (b. 1949), "The Sunken Garden", 1982 [ voice and piano ] [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889 - 1960), "The sunken garden", published 1933 [ three-part chorus (soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto) a cappella ] [sung text not yet checked]
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website: 2008-01-11
Line count: 20
Word count: 102