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.