A nun describes the enclosed garden made for her: gray walls, straight paths, and carefully planted roses and lilies. It is lovely but rigid, and even its smallest winding path leads back to the chapel gate. She has tried to grow pansies by the chapel wall, but they never bloom because the tower blocks the sunlight; under that cold shadow, her flowers die. The garden holds marble Mary and Christ on the cross, and she may walk there only if she has not sinned. Yet her heart keeps returning to a wild garden from her past, full of birches, elms, maples, a brook, and clover fields. The mood is quiet, melancholy, and restrained: she feels duty-bound to the convent but deeply longs for the freedom and life of the natural world. The vesper bell interrupts, calling her back from that longing.
The Nun's Garden — Summary
They have made me a lovely garden With walls that are rugged and gray; They have filled it with pinks and roses And lilies that bloom but a day; But the walls are so high and frowning, And the paths are so smooth and straight, And even their smallest winding Leads straight to the chapel gate.
I have planted a bed of pansies Along by the chapel wall, But though I have watered and weeded They never have blossomed at all. The sunshine of God cannot fall there, For the chapel tower is too high; So under its cold, gray shadow My poor little blossoms die.
The Mother of God--in marble-- Gleams white where the willows toss, And at the far end of the pathway The dear Christ hangs on the cross; And when the vespers are over, If I have not sinned all day, I may walk to the end of the garden And kneel by the cross and pray.
But oh, for the wild, wild garden That I knew in the days gone by, Where the birches and elms and maples Stretched up to the wind-swept sky; Where, murmuring silver music, The brook through the ferny dell Ran down to the fields of clover,-- But hush, there's the vesper bell!