Page:Poems of nature, Thoreau, 1895.djvu/36

12 To keep my branches green,

But stand

In a bare cup.

Some tender buds were left upon my stem

In mimicry of life,

But ah! the children will not know,

Till time has withered them,

The woe

With which they're rife.

But now I see I was not plucked for nought,

And after in life's vase

Of glass set while I might survive,

But by a kind hand brought

Alive

To a strange place.