McClure's Magazine/Volume 7/Number 5/To a Weed

You bold thing! thrusting 'neath the very nose Of her fastidious majesty, the rose, Ev'n in the best ordained garden-bed, Unauthorized, your smiling little head!

The gardener,—mind,—will come in his big boots And drag you up by your rebellious roots, And cast you forth to shrivel in the sun, Your daring quelled, your little weed's life done.

And when the noon cools and the sun drops low, He'll come again with his big wheelbarrow And trundle you,—I don't know clearly where,— But off—outside the dew, the light, the air.

Meantime—ah, yes! the air is very blue, And gold the light, and diamond the dew,— You laugh and courtesy in your worthless way, And you are gay—oh, so exceeding gay!

You argue in your manner of a weed, You did not make yourself grow from a seed, You fancy you've a claim to standing-room, You dream yourself a right to breathe and bloom.

The sun loves you, you think, just as the rose; He never scorned you for a weed,—he knows, The green-gold flies rest on you, and are glad, It's only cross old gardeners find you bad.

You know, you weed, I quite agree with you; I am a weed myself, and I laugh too,— Both, just as long as we can shun his eye, Let's sniff at the old gardener trudging by!