A " GARDINER'S " MEDITATION [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.]
Sin, I shall be grateful to any of your readers who will supply me with the source of the following lines, and, incidentally, correct by the book any mistakes noticeable in spelling and punctuation, as I may recall these with less exactitude than the stanza itself.
" Plant, Lorde, in me the tree of godly lyfo, Hedge me about with Thy strong fence of faith ; If Thee it please. use else Thy pruning knife Lest that, 0 Lorde ! as a good gardiner saith, If suckers draw the sappe from bowes on high Perhaps in tyme the top of tree may die. Let, Lorde, this tree be set within Thy garden-wall Of Paradise, where grows no one ill sprig at all."
The verse came into my possession a quarter of a cen'awy or so ago, printed on a card, and possibly published about that time by Masters or Mowbrays.
Could it be by Quarles ? or by Donne - - or even by George Herbert, although I never remember to have noticed the poem
in his collected works.----I am, Sir, &c., IIEI.r•.x Cour.
3 rue de Montevideo, Paris, foe.
Previous page
