Garden-Fancies - II. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis

I.     Plague take all your pedants, say I!     He who wrote what I hold in my hand,     Centuries back was so good as to die,     Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;     This, that was a book in its time,     Printed on paper and bound in leather,     Last month in the white of a matin-prime     Just when the birds sang all together. II.     Into the garden I brought it to read,     And under the arbute and laurustine     Read it, so help me grace in my need,     From title-page to closing line.     Chapter on chapter did I count,     As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge;     Added up the mortal amount;     And then proceeded to my revenge. III.     Yonders a plum-tree with a crevice     An owl would build in, were he but sage;     For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis     In a castle of the Middle Age,     Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;     When hed be private, there might he spend     Hours alone in his ladys chamber:     Into this crevice I dropped our friend. IV.     Splash, went he, as under he ducked,     At the bottom, I knew, rain-drippings stagnate;     Next, a handful of blossoms I plucked     To bury him with, my bookshelfs magnate;     Then I went in-doors, brought out a loaf,     Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis;     Lay on the grass and forgot the oaf     Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais. V.     Now, this morning, betwixt the moss     And gum that locked our friend in limbo,     A spider had spun his web across,     And sat in the midst with arms akimbo:     So, I took pity, for learnings sake,     And, de profundis, accentibus ltis,     Cantate! quoth I, as I got a rake;     And up I fished his delectable treatise. VI.     Here you have it, dry in the sun,     With all the binding all of a blister,     And great blue spots where the ink has run,     And reddish streaks that wink and glister     Oer the page so beautifully yellow,     Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks!     Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow?     Heres one stuck in his chapter six! VII.     How did he like it when the live creatures     Tickled and toused and browsed him all over,     And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,     Came in, each one, for his right of trover;     When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face     Made of her eggs the stately deposit,     And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface     As tiled in the top of his black wifes closet? VIII.     All that life and fun and romping,     All that frisking and twisting and coupling,     While slowly our poor friends leaves were swamping     And clasps were cracking and covers suppling!     As if you had carried sour John Knox     To the play-house at Paris, Vienna or Munich,     Fastened him into a front-row box,     And danced off the Ballet with trousers and tunic. IX.     Come, old Martyr! What, torment enough is it?     Back to my room shall you take your sweet self.     Good-bye, mother-beetle; husband-eft, sufficit!     See the snug niche I have made on my shelf!     A.s book shall prop you up, B.s shall cover you,     Heres C. to be grave with, or D. to be gay,     And with E. on each side, and F. right over you,     Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-day!