A booklet privately published by HappenStance. The text was originally published in 1922. The notes say that Monro was in a failing marriage, coming to accept that he was gay. Reading the booklet, this doesn't surprise me.
Carol Rumens says "He was at heart a Shelleyan romantic who nevertheless responded excitedly to the radical poetics of his age. ... Although he was never a thorough-going Imagist, Monro was no insipid Georgian, either. TS Eliot, for example, who thought very highly of the senior poet, and published him in The Criterion, undoubtedly echoes Monro's style at times in The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. ... At times, the writer he seems to resemble most is Virginia Woolf"
The introduction says "Sexuality is not the central theme of The Garden. The poem is about the failure of ideals". I think I must have a dirty mind. Here are some extracts - "He told me he had seen a ruined garden Outside the town ... He said that no one knew The garden but himself; Though hundreds passed it day to day, Yet no one knew it but himself ... The birds, he said, were like a choir Of lively boys, Who never went to school But sang instead ... Mile after mile we walk. He is pleased. Our feet become heavy with dust, and we laugh, And we talk all the while of our future delight ... We lay down weary in the shadow of elms ... it was the garden he had meant: But not the one he had described ... Then suddenly from out his conversation I saw it in the light of his own thought: A phantom Eden ... I did not see that man again Until a year had gone or more. I had not found him anywhere, And many times had gone to seek The garden, but it was not there. One day along the country road There he was ... We saw the garden again in our mutual thought ... Quickly we ran in our joy; Quickly - then stopped, and stared. An angel with a flaming sword Stood large, and beautiful ... The angel dropped his hopeless sword ... And wept into his hands: but we Feared, and turned back to our own world"
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