BEYOND the gates thou gav'st a field to till; <br />I have a larger on my window-sill. <br />A farm, d'ye say? Is this a farm to you, <br />Where for all woods I spay one tuft of rue, <br />And that so rusty, and so small a thing, <br />One shrill cicada hides it with a wing; <br />Where one cucumber covers all the plain; <br />And where one serpent rings himself in vain <br />To enter wholly; and a single snail <br />Eats all and exit fasting to the pool? <br />Here shall my gardener be the dusty mole. <br />My only ploughman the . . . mole. <br />Here shall I wait in vain till figs be set, <br />And till the spring disclose the violet. <br />Through all my wilds a tameless mouse careers, <br />And in that narrow boundary appears, <br />Huge as the stalking lion of Algiers, <br />Huge as the fabled boar of Calydon. <br />And all my hay is at one swoop impresst <br />By one low-flying swallow for her nest, <br />Strip god Priapus of each attribute <br />Here finds he scarce a pedestal to foot. <br />The gathered harvest scarcely brims a spoon; <br />And all my vintage drips in a cocoon. <br />Generous are you, but I more generous still: <br />Take back your farm and stand me half a gill!<br /><br />Robert Louis Stevenson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-lupum/
