Scene In A Garden
From “Paracelsus”

By Robert Browning

Autumn wins you best by this mute
Appeal to sympathy for its decay.
Look up then, Michal, nor esteem the less
Your stained and dropping vines their grapes
bow down,
Nor blame those creaking trees bent with their 
fruit,
That apple tree with a rare after-birth
Of peeping blooms sprinkled its wealth among!
Then for the winds — what wind that ever raved
Shall vex that ash which overlooks us both,
So proud it wears its berries? Ah, at length,
The old smile meet for her, the lady of this
Sequestered nest! – this kingdom, limited
Alone by one old populous green wall
Tenanted by the ever busy flies,
Gray crickets and shy lizards and quick spiders,
Each family of the silver-threaded moss –
Which, look through near, this way, and it
appears
A stubble field or a cane brake, a marsh
Of bulrush whitening in the sun: laugh now!
Fancy the crickets, each one in his house,
Looking out, wondering at the world – or best
Yon painted snail with his gay shell of dew
Traveling to see the glossy balls high up,
Hung by the caterpillar, like gold lamps.


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