THE fallen leaves were lying thick upon the withered grass. "My lawn's no longer span and spick, alack," I cried, "alas! The look of things imparts an ache, and kills my sunny smile; I'll get a muzzle-loading rake, and heap them in a pile." A learned professor came along, just at that fateful time. "To rake the fallen leaves is wrong," he said; "in fact, a crime. The sod demands the nutriment that rotting leaves bestow, so let them with the soil be blent, and they will make things grow." I thanked that learned and able guy, and gave him a cheroot; then took the rake and laid it by, and played upon my lute. The leaves grew deeper on the lawn, blown there by every breeze, and when I took a walk thereon, they reached up to my knees. Then ambled to my garden gate the sawbones, stern and pale. "You make me tired," he said, "you skate—you ought to be in jail. For public health have you no care, most reckless of all knaves? These rotting leaves pollute the air, and send men to their graves." And thus it's been my journey through, a journey rough and long; whatever I attempt to do, is sure to be all wrong. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MODERN LOVE: 30 by GEORGE MEREDITH SONNET UPON HISTORIE OF GEORGE CASTRIOT, ALIAS SCANDERBERG by EDMUND SPENSER THE COMPLAINT OF POETIE, FOR THE DEATH OF LIBERALITE by RICHARD BARNFIELD SONG by CHARLES GRANGER BLANDEN THE THING TO DO by GAMALIEL BRADFORD AN OXFORD IDYLL by THOMAS EDWARD BROWN |