"White placid marble gods should keep / Good watch in every shadowy lawn"

This is a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson about what poetry could be - 'had I the power that have the will'. There's something immensely peaceful and gentle about the vision he describes, which makes me think he achieved his goal more nearly than he believed. This is the garden I imagine when I'm reading it (well, actually I imagine the magical garden from The Enchanted Castle, but Goodnestone is the closest I've ever been to that in real life):




Had I the power that have the will,
The enfeebled will - a modern curse -
This book of mine should blossom still
A perfect garden-ground of verse.

White placid marble gods should keep
Good watch in every shadowy lawn;
And from clean, easy-breathing sleep
The birds should waken me at dawn.

- A fairy garden; - none the less
Throughout these gracious paths of mine
All day there should be free access
For stricken hearts and lives that pine;

And by the folded lawns all day -
No idle gods for such a land -
All active Love should take its way
With active Labour hand in hand.

Arthur Hughes, 'Caedmon's Awakening'