Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Songs, Ballads, and a Play (1888). III. An Orchard at Avignon

A. Mary F. Robinson-Darmesteter (1857–1944)

THE HILLS are white, but not with snow:

They are as pale in summer time,

For herb or grass may never grow

Upon their slopes of lime.

Within the circle of the hills

A ring, all flowering in a round,

An orchard-ring of almond fills

The plot of stony ground.

More fair than happier trees, I think,

Grown in well watered pasture land,

These parched and stunted branches, pink

Above the stones and sand.

O white, austere, ideal place,

Where very few will care to come,

Where spring hath lost the waving grace

She wears for us at home!

Fain would I sit and watch for hours

The holy whiteness of thy hills,

Their wreath of pale auroral flowers,

Their peace the silence fills.

A place of secret peace thou art,

Such peace as in an hour of pain

One moment fills the amazed heart,

And never comes again.