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-caves Look’d down, half-pleased, half-frighten’d, 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: O 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 clipt and cut, And alleys, faded places, By squares of tropic summer shut And warm’d in crystal cases. But these, tho’ fed with careful dirt, Are neither green nor sappy; Half-conscious of the garden-squirt, The spindlings look unhappy,[3] 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. [1] Amphion was no doubt capable of performing all the feats here attributed to him, but there is no record of them; he appears to have confined himself to charming the stones into their places when Thebes was being built. Tennyson seems to have confounded him with Orpheus. [2] Till 1857 these four lines ran thus:— The birch-tree swang her fragrant hair, The bramble cast her berry. The gin within the juniper Began to make him merry. [3] All editions up to and including 1850. The poor things look unhappy. St. Agnes This exquisite little poem was first published in 1837 in the _Keepsake_, an annual edited by Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, and was included in the edition of 1842. No alteration has been made in it since 1842. In 1857 the title was altered from “St. Agnes” to “St. Agnes’ Eve,” thus bringing it near to Keats’ poem, which certainly influenced Tennyson in writing it, as a comparison of the opening of the two poems will show. The saint from whom the poem takes its name was a young girl of thirteen who suffered martyrdom in the reign of Diocletian: she is a companion to Sir Galahad.