How dully men themselves confine,

In seeking pleasures from the vine,

Succumbing to the body’s snares,

They try to drown their spirits’ cares,

When there beneath the leaves and trees,

Flourishes that latent breeze

That in such simple weeds delights

The Soul, the Mind, the Sense, the Slight.

No Burgund red or Riesling white

Can offer such astonied sight,

Not can tobacco’s nasal sting

Inspire a world so interesting;

Thus simple garden greens unfold

As Afghan brown and Mongol gold.

To this the bean from Java’s strait

Is but the vulgar’s opiate.

What fascination does me hold

To this plant glory here enrolled?

Can pleasure have more perquisites

Better than this lovely blitz?

The fruits and flowers, plump and ripe,

Themselves do offer for my pipe.

My eyes are feet, my toes are head,

It seems than on my hands I tread,

And in this topsy-turv’d surmise

I see the garden as it is.

The world I carry in my head

Is there among the green plants spread,

As it was in Eden’s time,

Before our parents got the sign,

Reducing every word and deed

To a greenish mind in a canny weed.