Inscription in a Garden

George Gascoigne

If any flower that here is grown,
Or any herb may ease your pain,
Take and account it as your own,
But recompense the like again.
For some and some is honest play,
And so my wife taught me to say.

If here to walk you take delight,
Why come and welcome when you will.
If I bid you sup here this night,
Bid me another time and still
Think some and some is honest play,
For so my wife taught me to say.

Thus if you sup or dine with me,
If you walk here or sit at ease,
If you desire the thing you see,
And have the same your mind to please,
Think some and some is honest play,
And so my wife taught me to say.

This poem appears in The Posies, published in 1575, as part of a larger forty-two line poem in seven stanzas. The preceding piece of the poem is written at "One end of a close walk which he hath in his garden," while this latter piece was apparently composed "In that other end of his said close walk." The first section compares flowers and herbs to young men at court--flowers are attractive, but soon wither and lose their beauty while the less pleasing, more practical herbs have sunk deep roots, and will return to bloom again. This composition, written at the opposite end of his garden, deals playfully with courtly hospitality.

&&&&&

Wild Garden

Ralph Waldo Emerson

IF I could put my woods in song
And tell what's there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void.

In my plot no tulips blow,--
Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;
And rank the savage maples grow
From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red.

My garden is a forest ledge
Which older forests bound;
The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,
Then plunge to depths profound.

From 'My Garden'.

&&&&&

In an abandoned garden

Han-shan

My house is at the foot of the green cliff,
My garden, a jumble of weeds I no longer bother to mow.
New vines dangle in twisted strands
Over old rocks rising steep and high.

Monkeys make off with the mountain fruits,
The white heron crams his bill with fish from the pond,
Whil I, with a book or two of the immortals,
Read under the trees - mumble, mumble.

Translated by Burton Watson