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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
BOTANICAL GARDENS, by EDGAR LEE MASTERS Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: He follows me no more, I said, nor stands Last Line: "there shall be springs and springs!" Subject(s): Gardens & Gardening | |||
He follows me no more, I said, nor stands Beside me. And I wake these later days In an April mood, a wonder light and free. The vision is gone, but gone the constant pain Of constant thought. I see dawn from my hill, And watch the lights which fingers from the waters Twine from the sun or moon. Or look across The waste of bays and marshes to the woods, Under the prism colors of the air, Held in a vacuum silence, where the clouds, Like cyclop hoods are tossed against the sky In terrible glory. And earth charmed I lie Before the staring sphinx whose musing face Is this Egyptian heaven, and whose eyes Are separate clouds of gold, whose pedestal Is earth, whose silken sheathed claws No longer toy with me, even while I stroke them: Since I have ceased to tease her. Then behold A breeze is blown out of a world becalmed, And as I see the multitudinous leaves Fluttered against the water and the light, And see this light unveil itself, reveal An inner light, a Presence, Secret splendor, I clap hands over eyes, for the earth reels; And I have fears of dieties shown or spun From nothingness. But when I look again The earth has stayed itself, I see the lake, The leaves, the light of the sun, the cyclop hoods Of thunder heads, yet feel upon my arm A hand I know, and hear a voice I know -- He has returned and brought with him the thought And the old pain. The voice says: "Leave the sphinx. The garden waits your study fully grown." And I arise and follow down a slope To a lawn by the lake and an ancient seat of stone, And near it a fountain's shattered rim enclosing An Eros of light mood, whose sculptured smile Consciously dimples for the unveiled pistil of love, As he strokes with baby hand the slender arching Neck of a swan. And here is a peristyle Whose carven columns are pink as the long updrawn Stalks of tulips bedded in April snow. And sunk amid tiger lillies is the face Of an Asian Aphrodite close to the seat With feet of a Babylonian lion amid This ruined garden of yellow daisies, poppies And ruddy asphodel from Crete, it seems, Though here is our western moon as white and thin As an abalone shell hung under the boughs Of an oak, that is mocked by the vastness of sky between His boughs and the moon in this sky of afternoon.... We walk to the water's edge and here he shows me Green scum, or stalks, or sedges, grasses, shrubs, That yield to trees beyond the levels, where The beech and oak have triumph; for along This gradual growth from algae, reeds and grasses, That builds the soil against the water's hands, All things are fierce for place and garner life From weaker things. And then he shows me root stocks, And Alpine willow, growths that sneak and crawl Beneath the soil. Or as we leave the lake And walk the forest I behold lianas, Smilax or woodbine climbing round the trunks Of giant trees that live and out of earth, And out of air make strength and food and ask No other help. And in this place I see Spiral bryony, python of the vines That coils and crushes; and that banyan tree Whose spreading branches drop new roots to earth, And lives afar from where the parent trunk Has sunk its roots, so that the healthful sun Is darkened: as a people might be darkened By ignorance or want or tyranny, Or dogma of a jungle hidden faith. Why is it, think I, though I dare not speak, That this should be to forests or to men; That water fails, and light decreases, heat Of God's air lessens, and the soil goes spent, Till plants change leaves and stalks and seeds as well, Or migrate from the olden places, go In search of life, or if they cannot move Die in the ruthless marches. That is life, he said. For even these, the giants scatter life Into the maws of death. That towering tree That for these hundred years has leafed itself, And through its leaves out of the magic air Drawn nutriment for annual girths, took root Out of an acorn which good chance preserved, While all its brother acorns cast to earth, To make trees, by a parent tree now gone, Were crushed, devoured, or strangled as they sprouted Amid thick jealous growth wherein they fell. All acorns but this one were lost. Then he reads My questioning thought and shows me yuccas, cactus Whose thick leaves in the rainless places thrive. And shows me leaves that must have rain, and roots That must have water where the river flows. And how the spirit of life, though turned or driven This way or that beyond a course begun, Cannot be stayed or quenched, but moves, conforms To soil and sun, makes roots, or thickens leaves, Or thins or re-adjusts them on the stem To fashion forth itself, produce its kind. Nor dies not, rests not, nor surrenders not, Is only changed or buried, re-appears As other forms of life. We had walked through A forest of sequoias, beeches, pines, And ancient oaks where I could see the trace Of willows, alders, ruined or devoured By the great Titans. At last We reached my hill and sat and overlooked The garden at our feet, even to the place Of tiger lilies and of asphodel, By now beneath the self-same moon, grown denser: As where the wounded surface of the shell Thickens its shimmering stuff in spiral coigns Of the shell, so was the moon above the seat Beside the Eros and the Aphrodite Sunk amid yellow daisies and deep grass. And here we sat and looked. And here my vision Was over all we saw, but not a part Of what we saw, for all we saw stood forth As foreign to myself as something touched To learn the thing it is. I might have asked Who owns this garden, for the thought arose With my surprise, who owns this garden, who Planted this garden, why and to what end, And why this fight for place, for soil and sun Water and air, and why this enmity Between the things here planted, and between Flying or crawling life and plants, and whence The power that falls in one place but arises Some other place; and why the unceasing growth Of all these forms that only come to seed, Then disappear to enrich the insatiate soil Where the new seed falls? But silence kept me there For wonder of the beauty which I saw, Even while the faculty of external vision Kept clear the garden separate from me, Envisioned, seen as grasses, sedges, alders, As forestry, as fields of wheat and corn, As the vast theatre of unceasing life, Moving to life and blind to all but life; As places used, tried out, as if the gardener, For his delight or use, or for an end Of good or beauty made experiments With seed or soils or crossings of the seed. Even as peoples, epochs, did the garden Lie to my vision, or as races crowding, Absorbing, dispossessing, killing races, Not only for a place to grow, but under A stimulus of doctrine: as Mahomet, Or Jesus, like a vital change of air, Or artifice of culture, made the garden, Which mortals call the world, grow in a way, And overgrow the world as neither dreamed. Who is the Gardener then? Or is there one Beside the life within the plant, within The python climbers, wandering sedges, root stalks, Thorn bushes, night-shade, deadly saprophytes, Goths, Vandals, Tartars, striving for more life, And praying to the urge within as God, The Gardener who lays out the garden, sprays For insects which devour, keeps rich the soil For those who pray and know the Gardener As One who is without and over-sees?... But while in contemplation of the garden, Whether from failing day or from departure Of my own vision in the things it saw, Bereft of penetrating thought I sank, Became a part of what I saw and lost The great solution. As we sat in silence, And coming night, what seemed the sinking moon, Amid the yellow sedges by the lake Began to twinkle, as a fire were blown -- And it was fire, the garden was afire, As it were all the world had flamed with war. And a wind came out of the bright heaven And blew the flames, first through the ruined garden, Then through the wood, the fields of wheat, at last Nothing was left but waste and wreaths of smoke Twisting toward the stars. And there he sat Nor uttered aught, save when I sighed he said "If it be comforting I promise you Another spring shall come." "And after that?" "Another spring -- that's all I know myself, There shall be springs and springs!" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NOVEMBER GARDEN: AN ELEGY by ANDREW HUDGINS AN ENGLISH GARDEN IN AUSTRIA (SEEN AFTER DER ROSENKAVALIER) by RANDALL JARRELL ACROSS THE BROWN RIVER by GALWAY KINNELL A DESERTED GARDEN by GEORGE LAWRENCE ANDREWS NOT THE SWEET CICELY OF GERARDES HERBALL by MARGARET AVISON AN OLD GARDEN by HERBERT BASHFORD SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: ALEXANDER THROCKMORTON by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |
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