Classic Poem

Here was the gate. The broken paling,
As if before the wind, inclines,
The posts half rotted, and the pickets failing,
Held only up by vines.

The plum-trees stand, though gnarled and speckled
With leprosy of old disease;
By cells of wormy life the trunks are freckled,
And moss enfolds their knees.
I push aside the boughs and enter:
Alas! the garden's nymph has fled,
With every charm that leaf and blossom lent her,
And left a hag instead.

Some female satyr from the thicket,
Child of the bramble and the weed,
Sprang shouting over the unguarded wicket
With all her savage breed.

She banished hence the ordered graces
That smoothed a way for Beauty's feet,
And gave her ugliest imps the vacant places,
To spoil what once was sweet.

Here, under rankling mulleins, dwindle
The borders, hidden long ago;
Here shoots the dock in many a rusty spindle,
And purslane creeps below.

The thyme runs wild, and vainly sweetens,
Hid from its bees, the conquering grass;
And even the rose with briery menace threatens
To tear me as I pass.

Where show the weeds a grayer color,
The stalks of lavender and rue
Stretch like imploring arms, — but, ever duller,
They slowly perish too.

Only the pear-tree's fruitless scion
Exults above the garden's fall;
Only the thick-maned ivy, like a lion,
Devours the crumbling wall.

What still survives becomes as savage
As that which entered to destroy,
Taking an air of riot and of ravage,
Of strange and wanton joy.

No copse unpruned, no mountain hollow,
So lawless in its growth may be:
Where the wild weeds have room to chase and follow,
They graceful are, and free.
But Nature here attempts revenges
For her obedience unto toil;
She brings her rankest life with loathsome changes
To smite the fattened soil.

For herbs of sweet and wholesome savor
She plants her stems of bitter juice;
From flowers she steals the scent, from fruits the flavor,
From homelier things the use.

Her angel is a mocking devil,
If once the law relax its bands;
In Man's neglected fields she holds her revel,
Takes back, and spoils his lands.

Once having broken ground, he never
The virgin sod can plant again:
The soil demands his services forever, —
And God gives sun and rain!