Sunday
I came across Helen Keller’s wonderful poem “In the Garden of the Lord” when I was thumbing through A Sacrifice of Praise: An Anthology of Christian Poetry in English from Caedmon to the Mid-Twentieth Century. Apparently she loved working in her garden, once writing to a friend,
I have great joy in the tulips and lilacs which make my garden “look like the waking of Creation.” O the potent witchery of smell! Leaves opening delicately on tree and rambler and rose-bush tell me God has passed this way, and I forget the disturbing nearness of the city in the eternal miracle of a tiny garden great with wonders.
Of course, she cannot actually see what the garden looks like, but, denied sight and hearing, she is all the more attuned to the other senses. These show up in the poem as the “playful winds that blow the scent of rose and jessamine in eddying whirls” and “the sun that kindles all the place with radiant life.”
Like the blind man that Jesus heals, Keller is so overwhelmed by the experience that it is as though her eyes were touched with light. She feels compelled to glorify the Lord–”there was laid upon my lips a flame of fire”—and she laughs, shouts, and, in the last instance, prays.
In the Garden of the Lord
By Helen Keller
The word of God came unto me,
Sitting alone among the multitudes;
And my blind eyes were touched with light.
And there was laid upon my lips a flame of fire.
I laugh and shout for life is good,
Though my feet are set in silent ways.
In merry mood I leave the crowd
To walk in my garden. Ever as I walk
I gather fruits and flowers in my hands.
And with joyful heart I bless the sun
That kindles all the place with radiant life.
I run with playful winds that blow the scent
Of rose and jessamine in eddying whirls.
At last I come where tall lilies grow,
Lifting their faces like white saints to God.
While the lilies pray, I kneel upon the ground;
I have strayed into the holy temple of the Lord.
