As busy Aurelia, 'twixt work and 'twixt play, <br />Was labouring industriously hard <br />To cull the vile weeds from the flowerets away, <br />Which grew in her father's court-yard; <br /> <br />In her juvenile anger, wherever she found, <br />She plucked, and she pulled, and she tore; <br />The poor passive sufferers bestrewed all the ground; <br />Not a weed of them all she forbore. <br /> <br />At length 'twas her chance on some nettles to light <br />(Things, till then, she had scarcely heard named); <br />The vulgar intruders called forth all her spite; <br />In a transport of rage she exclaimed, <br /> <br />'Shall briars so unsightly and worthless as those <br />Their great sprawling leaves thus presume <br />To mix with the pink, the jonquil, and the rose, <br />And take up a flower's sweet room?' <br /> <br />On the odious offenders enragëd she flew; <br />But she presently found to her cost <br />A tingling unlooked for, a pain that was new, <br />And rage was in agony lost. <br /> <br />To her father she hastily fled for relief, <br />And told him her pain and her smart; <br />With kindly caresses he soothëd her grief, <br />Then smiling he took the weed's part. <br /> <br />'The world, my Aurelia, this garden of ours <br />Resembles: too apt we're to deem <br />In the world's larger garden ourselves as the flowers, <br />And the poor but as weeds to esteem. <br /> <br />'But them if we rate, or with rudeness repel, <br />Though some will be passive enough, <br />From others who 're more independent 'tis well <br />If we meet not a stinging rebuff.'<br /><br />Charles Lamb<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/weeding-5/