Sit Down With Me Awhile
Text: Ursula Bethell (1874-1945)
1. Sit Down With Me Awhile
Sit down with me awhile beside the heath corner.
Here have I laboured hour on hour in winter
Digging thick clay, breaking up clods, and draining,
Carrying away cold mud, bringing up sandy loam,
Bringing these rocks and setting them all in their places,
To be shelter from winds, shade from too burning sun.
See now how sweetly all these plants are springing
Green, ever green, and flowering turn by turn.
Delicate heaths, and their fragrant Australian kinsmen
Shedding, as once unknown in New Holland, strange scents on the air
And purple and white daboecia – the Irish heather
Said in the nursery man’s list to be well suited
For small gardens, for rock gardens, and for graveyards.
2. Warfare
Night and day my garden now is menaced
By a host of abominable enemies.
Some visible, some invisible, some darkly lurking,
Some threatened by prophetic experts, and anticipated;
Mildew, rust, red mite, codlin moth,
Pullulating aphids, caterpillars, beetles,
All manner of devils, animal and vegetable.
I assault, I give battle relentlessly till my strength is exhausted.
But is it a forlorn hope? What are my sprays and a few chemicals?
A truce! Let me sit down upon this bench,
And lift my eyes beyond the confines of this strife!
How peaceful sleeps the great Pacific to the eastward;
Mile upon mile unbroken rests the open plain;
The purple mountains in mysterious repose;
The dim sky buttressed with a northern arch of cloud;
Faint, in the amethystine radiance of the west,
Eternal snows …
3. Ado
It grows too fast! I cannot keep pace with it;
While I mow the front lawns, the drying green becomes impossible
While I weed the east path, from the west path spring dandelions,
What time I sort the borders, the orchard escapes me.
And then the interruptions! the interlopers!
While I clap my hands against the blackbird,
Michael, our cat, is rolling on a seedling;
While I chase Michael, a young rabbit is eyeing the lettuces.
And oh the orgies, to think of the orgies
When I am not present to preside over this microcosm!
4. Homage
I have told you much of the flowers in my garden
And many yet remain of which I have not told
But when I would tell you of the roses, the roses –
When it comes to the roses, how should I find words?
Yet to them I would consecrate a few faltering sentences
As they grow in their companies by colour and by kind.
Their names may be recorded but what record might be given
Of their symmetry, spell-binding scents, the depth
And gradual brilliance of eye-reposing hue?
When it comes to the roses, how should I find words?
No need, no need, when one speaks the word roses, roses,
All their beauty and significance is spoken too.
Roses of Persia, Roses of Damascus;
Roses held up for sale in Piccadilly Circus;
Roses for queens’ bedchambers, and the costermongers’ holiday;
Roses for the tender babe’s first apprehensions
And for the sage’s mystic contemplations;
Roses for fame, pride, joy, romance,
Rapture, remembrance, solace in sore pain;
Symbols of secrecy, truth, love, holiness;
Roses on the green graves of our mortality,
Roses by the green walks of the New Jerusalem –
So to all you lovely roses, Hail.
5. Easter Bells
Easter. And morning bells
Chime in the late dark.
Soon those fluttering birds
Will seek a more genial clime.
Time has come to light fires
For lack of enlivening sun.
Summer’s arrow is spent,
Stored her last tribute.
So, now, we plant our bulbs
With assured vision,
And, now, we sow our seeds
Sagely for sure quickening.
So, purging our borders
We burn all rubbish up,
That all weak and waste growth,
That all unprofitable weeds,
All canker and corrosion,
May be consumed utterly.
These universal bonfires
Have a savour of sacrifice.
See how their clean smoke,
Ruddy and white whorls,
Rises to the still heavens
In plumy spirals.
You take me – yes, I know it –
Fresh from your vernal Lent.
These ashes I will now spread
For nutriment about the roses,
Dust unto fertile dust,
And say no word more.
