THE smell of birds' nests faintly burning <br />Is autumn. In the autumn I came <br />Where spring had used me better, <br />To the clear red pebbles and the men of stone <br />And foundered beetles, to the broken Meleager <br />And thousands of white circles drifting past, <br />Cold suns in water; even to the dead grove <br />Where we had kissed, to the Tristania tree <br />Where we had kissed so awkwardly, <br />Noted by swans with damp, accusing eyes, <br />All gone to-day; only the leaves remain, <br />Gaunt paddles ribbed with herringbones <br />Of watermelon-pink. Never before <br />Had I assented to the hateful name <br />Meryta Macrophylla, on a tin tag. <br />That was no time for botany. But now the schools, <br />The horticulturists, come forth <br />Triumphantly with Latin. So be it now, <br />Meryta Macrophylla, and the old house, <br />Ringed with black stone, no Georgian Headlong Hall <br />With glass-eye windows winking candles forth, <br />Stuffed with French horns, globes, air-pumps, telescopes <br />And Cupid in a wig, playing the flute, <br />But truly, and without escape, <br />THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM, <br />Repeated dryly in Roman capitals, <br />THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM.<br /><br />Kenneth Slessor<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/elegy-in-a-botanic-gardens/
