Amphion

My father left a park to me,

      But it is wild and barren,

A garden too with scarce a tree

      And waster than a warren:

Yet say the neighbours when they call.

      It is not bad but good land,

And in it is the germ of all

      That grows within the woodland.

O had I lived when song was great

      In days of old Amphion,

And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,

      Nor cared for seed or scion!

And had I lived when song was great,

      And legs of trees were limber,

And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,

      And fiddled in the timber!

'Tis said he had a tuneful tongue,

      Such happy intonation,

Wherever he sat down and sung

      He left a small plantation;

Wherever in a lonely grove

      He set up his forlorn pipes,

The gouty oak began to move,

      And flounder into hornpipes.

The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown,

      And, as tradition teaches,

Young ashes pirouetted down

      Coquetting with young beeches;

And briony-vine and ivy-wreath

      Ran forward to his rhyming,

And from the valleys underneath

      Came little copses climbing.

The birch-tree swang her fragrant hair,

      The bramble cast her berry,

The gin within the juniper

      Began to make him merry,

The poplars, in long order due,

      With cypress promenaded,

The shock-head willows two and two

      By rivers gallopaded.

Came wet-shod alder from the wave,

      Came yews, a dismal coterie;

Each pluck'd his one foot from the grave,

      Poussetting with a sloe-tree:

Old elms came breaking from the vine,

      The vine streamed out to follow,

And, sweating rosin, plump'd the pine

      From many a cloudy hollow.

And wasn't it a sight to see,

      When, ere his song was ended,

Like some great landslip, tree by tree,

      The country-side descended;

And shepherds from the mountain-eaves

      Look'd down, half-pleased, half-frightened,

As dash'd about the drunken leaves

      The random sunshine lighten'd!

Oh, nature first was fresh to men,

      And wanton without measure;

So youthful and so flexile then,

      You moved her at your pleasure.

Twang out, my fiddle! shake the twigs!

      And make her dance attendance;

Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs,

      And scirrhous roots and tendons.

'Tis vain! in such a brassy age

      I could not move a thistle;

The very sparrows in the hedge

      Scarce answer to my whistle;

Or at the most, when three-parts-sick

      With strumming and with scraping,

A jackass heehaws from the rick,

      The passive oxen gaping.

But what is that I hear? a sound

      Like sleepy counsel pleading:

Lord!—'tis in my neighbour's ground,

      The modern Muses reading.

They read Botanic Treatises,

      And Works on Gardening thro' there,

And Methods of transplanting trees,

      To look as if they grew there.

The wither'd Misses! how they prose

      O'er books of travell'd seamen,

And show you slips of all that grows

      From England to Van Diemen.

They read in arbours dipt and cut,

      And alleys, faded places,

By squares of tropic summer shut

      And warm'd in crystal cases.

But these, though fed with careful dirt,

      Are neither green nor sappy;

Half-conscious of the garden-squirt,

      The poor things look unhappy.

Better to me the meanest weed

      That blows upon its mountain,

The vilest herb that runs to seed

      Beside its native fountain.

And I must work thro' months of toil,

      And years of cultivation,

Upon my proper patch of soil

      To grow my own plantation.

I'll take the showers as they fall,

      I will not vex my bosom,

Enough if at the end of all

      A little garden blossom.