Page:Poems - Tennyson (1843) - Volume 2 of 2.djvu/181

 But what is that I hear? a sound Like sleepy counsel pleading: Lord!—'tis in my neighbour's ground, The modern Muses reading. They read Botanic Treatises, And Works on Gardening thro' there, And Methods of transplanting trees, To look as if they grew there.

The wither'd Misses! how they prose O'er books of travell'd seamen, And show you slips of all that grows From England to Van Diemen. They read in arbours dipt and cut, And alleys, faded places, By squares of tropic summer shut And warm'd in crystal cases.

But these, though fed with careful dirt, Are neither green nor sappy; Half-conscious of the garden-squirt, The poor things look unhappy.