I visited an old estate today
 Whose gardens, much acclaimed throughout the world,
 Spread out beyond the gated entranceway
 In scenic splendors gradually unfurled.
 Bright potted blooms sprung beaming by the drive,
 While further off, large topiary yews
 Rose stoutly in the air. The site, alive
 With summer, traded sunned and shaded views.
 This composition—classical, restrained—
 Bespoke the glories of a golden age:
 An equilibrium perchance ordained
 By god-directors on an earthly stage.
 I set off lightly down a stone-laid path
 With boxwood gathered cloudlike at each side;
 Here, no hint of nature’s chastening wrath
 Impinged upon man’s flourishes of pride.
 Proceeding, I pressed forward on a walk
 Of gravel, through an arch of climbing vines
 And ramblers—where a long, inquiring stalk
 Of fragrant musk rose, with its fuzzy spines,
 Pressed toward my face with luscious pale-pink blooms.
 Aha! At once, I almost could distill
 A wayward slant within these outdoor rooms!
 Though order reigned, I glimpsed some riot spill
 From bush and bending bough. Each bordered sward
 Spoke elegance, encasing gemlike pools—
 Appointed, each, with cherubs keeping guard—
 Yet moss had gathered round the sculpted stools.
 Still rapt by these core plats, I shortly passed
 Into the grounds beyond—deep green and vast.
 Mincing, I issued from that inner fold
 To find ahead a trilling rivulet
 With flowers on either side; yet how controlled
 Was even this—a cautious, cool vignette!
 Nonetheless, as in some scattered spots
 I’d seen before, there crept a shaggy clump
 Of unmown grass—a few forgotten blots
 Upon this bloom-besprinkled sphere; a bump
 Of wild daylilies, mowed along with lawn;
 And, further yet afield, a sprawling mire
 Spread forth, less fettered still. Here berries’ brawn
 Arose obscenely through the bulbs—each briar
 Announcing more desuetude in this place—
 Until, at once, stopped short all tended space.
 There meadows shot up—shaggy, coarse, and plain;
 Wiry weeds and scabbed grass, and the mad buzz
 Of insects’ millions; here the splattering rain
 Had mothered slug and bug and mugworts’ fuzz.
 Beyond, thick woodlands, reckless and abrupt,
 Loomed, calling, “Ho, enough of tended stuff!
 We are what's real!”—threatening to erupt—
 Ah, dizzy, blowsy trees—nature’s high rough
 Abandon!
 And so I mused upon the human mind:
 Its own mild garths and cool Augustan plots
 Were laid for promenades—sedate, refined—
 A genteel garden park, it seems, of thoughts.
 Or so it might appear—yet gather close,
 O marveling guest, round something slantwise spied:
 An errant feature free of plan or pose—
 A rankling thing you’d wish you hadn’t eyed!
 Here, stark, the prankster stands—perhaps a spire
 Of malice rising prideful in the air;
 Perhaps a wild confusion of desire;
 Perhaps a raw delusion, none too rare.
 Unchecked, untrimmed, they hint at countless more
 Uncomely details sprung at every edge
 Of reason’s fair cross-axis, past the door
 Of harmony’s last stand; truth’s final hedge.
 Observe: my own best traits were raised by force
 In soil hauled in from some more fertile strand.
 My consciousness, when nature takes its course,
 Still bristles, as if tended by no hand.
 Stripped were the grounds from which my grace was carved;
 Spaded, seeded, hoed its gaping womb—
 Beaten and blazed its weeds; its vermin starved
 To press my brain toward paths and gorgeous bloom.
 Friend, pass no further from my watered spheres,
 Well-groomed to please men’s civil hands and eyes!
 For past these bounds, a roiling madness rears;
 The way of chaos rules and wilds arise!