MY garden, long time desolate,
⁠Were still of pleasure reft and bare
But for one single, lonely bloom
⁠That would insist on flowering there.

A fragile thing, in that chill place
⁠It grew where other joys were not,
Waxing a lovelier hope each day,—
⁠Albeit half tended, half forgot,—

Until with wild, resistless charm
⁠That sorrow's very self doth cheat,
It maketh of my desert drear
⁠A sunlit garden, fresh and sweet.