from: LEONARD WOOLF: A BIOGRAPHY
by Victoria Glendinning
There was a poem called “Luriana Lurilee” which meant something to them both – Leonard quoted a stanza from it in Growing, and Virginia in To the Lighthouse. It conveys the spirit of the private Garden of Eden inhabited by Leonard and Virginia when all was well.
Luriana, Lurilee
Come out and climb the garden-path,
Luriana Lurilee,
The China rose is all abloom
And buzzing with the yellow bee
We’ll swing you on the cedar-bough,
Luriana Lurilee.
I wonder if it seems to you
Luriana Lurillee
That all the lives we ever lived
And all the lives to be,
Are full of trees and waving leaves,
Luriana Lurilee.
How long it seems since you and I,
Luriana Lurilee.
Roamed in the forest where our kind
Had just begun to be,
And laughed & chattered in the flowers,
Luriana Lurilee.
How long since you and I went out,
Luriana Lurilee
To see the kings go riding by
Over lawn and daisylea,
With their palm-sheaves and cedar-leaves
Luriana Lurilee.
Swing, swing on the cedar bough!
Luriana Lurilee
Till you sleep in a bramble-heap
Or under the gloomy churchyard-tree,
And then fly back to swing on a bough,
Luriana Lurilee.
*** Whitsuntide 1899 ***
Charles Isac [sic] Elton
Also titled “A Garden Song” Adapted from Leonard Woolf’s transcript (1902), reproduced in Notes and Queries (2007) 54(2) pp.171-173
by PaulaB 