Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LEAVES IN THE YARD, by JOHN DANIEL PARSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LEAVES IN THE YARD, by                    
First Line: Go gather leaves and heap them into / pyres!
Last Line: Buried, like leaves, in leaves of wilderness.
Subject(s): Autumn; Death; Leaves; Nature; Seasons; Fall; Dead, The


GO gather leaves and heap them into pyres!
Hasten destruction with the workman's fires!
Let not a tawny leaf, a twig, remain
To leave upon the grass their autumn stain.
Let every lawn in man's own way be clean:
Approximate (if possible) the sheen
Of your luxurious rugs; all splendor show!
How like a carpet now the trim lawns grow!
Exterminate the odor of the leaf—
Obliterate its life, its death—all grief!
Let not our ears be deaf, our eyes be blind
With all this boisterous rustling in the wind!
Man treads today with rubber on his heels,
Grows ill with every passing pain he feels,
Is shocked at nature's unadorned arrays:
"As pretty as a picture!"—highest praise!
So rake the leaves and gather them together;
Their time is by, here is but winter weather.
But bear thou this in mind, thy life once done,
Thou shalt then lie in nature's nakedness,
Beneath the snow or wilted in the sun,
Buried, like leaves, in leaves of wilderness.





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