My life is full of scented fruits,
My garden blooms with stocks and cloves;
Yet o'er the wall my fancy shoots,
And hankers after harsher loves.

“Ah! why,”—my foolish heart repines,—
“Was I not housed within a waste?
These velvet flowers and syrop-wines
Are sweet, but are not to my taste.

“A howling moor, a wattled hut,
A piercing smoke of sodden peat,
The savour of a roasted nut,
Would make my weary pulses beat.”

O stupid brain that blindly swerves,
O heart that strives not, nor endures,
Since flowers are hardship to your nerves,
Thank heaven a garden lot is yours.