Poems (Van Rensselaer)/A Garden in the Fern
A GARDEN IN THE FERN
Make thyself lowly for this garden laidIn the clear stillness of the beech-tree shade.Make thyself lowly; lie amid the fern;Forget the size of men and tree-trunks; learn,With eyes attuned to daintier scale, to seeWhat the green garths of fairyland may be.
Hollowed a-top is this gray stone; its bedIs moss, and the enwalling fronds are spreadA space apart that so, untouched, may riseThe white wood-sorrel's delicate surpriseFrom the deep emerald floor. Come close and knowHow triple leaflets on each thin stalk grow,Drooping together at the touch of night,How the snowflakes of flowers, so exquisiteThey shame the wild rose as too large and bold,Are crimson-threaded and are eyed with gold.
Dark trefoil and white blossom—see, they press,A tremulous company of loveliness,Trusting frail feet to nook and crevice, upThe lichened stone to find and wreathe its cup,The moss-lined basin that the diligent wingsOf winds have sown with seeds of tiny things.
There are no words minute and sweet enoughTo tell how flourishes upon its roughRock-base this garden plot. Here too are fernsBut miniature: e'en the wood-sorrel turnsDownward to them its golden glance; inch-tallAnd scarcely more the grasses grow and allTheir bonny neighbors of the broader leaf—Minim parterres where one small scarlet sheafOf strawberries is statured like a tree,And gauzy flies as birds for bigness be.
Why seek far grandeurs? Wash thy lids with dewOf the accustomed morning, line thy shoeWith fern-seed from the well-known woodland path,And go (invisibly to him who hathProud eyes for the remote and large) where stand,Frequent, unfenced, the garths of fairyland.
Onteora.