THE WICKET GATE
My heart is a wicket gate; hung at a garden 'twixt me and the dinning day it stands.
Beyond is the teeming roadway and the agony of day's pageantry as it writhes past,
And I am the garden, and my heart the wicket gate.
He who enters unto this sacred spot first should turn the gate upon its pivot;
Yea, entering he shall know the inner land with its shadeful seclusions,
With its white-lit eves and its gilded days, with its shuttling songsters.
He shall know the bordered plots; he shall become immersed in the perfume of peace,
I am a garden, and my heart a wicket gate;
And the road beyond, the teeming road with its writhing agony, is remote;
For I shall let no stranger pass the wicket gate,
Save that I greet him with a delicate intimacy.
