I made a garden just to keep about me The birds and things I love, all summer long. I doubt not they'd live well enough without me; How would I live without them -- their sweet song? I made a garden and had my own flowers -- All that I cared to pick and more too, there. Most of them died and fell in scented showers Upon the beds, and colored the warm air. Mine was not such a garden as I'd thought of -- A deep wild garden that no hand has trimmed In many years -- a tangle that is wrought of Old fashioned flowers 'neath old trees, barren limbed But so my flowers brought the insects winging, The butterflies, the neighbors' murmuring bees, And birds one must not cage or they cease singing, I asked no more, well satisfied with these. My garden my fair garden! I saw wither Flower, leaf, and branch, and from the maple bough Leaves race across the bare beds none knows whither. The lives I entertained where are they now? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...POOR POLL by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE: 27 by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING OUR GOOD PRESIDENT by PHOEBE CARY CHRISTMAS BELLS by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW MORITURI SALUTAMUS [WE WHO ARE TO DIE SALUTE YOU] by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW ELOISA TO ABELARD by ALEXANDER POPE SONNET: 25 by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE |