A serviceable thing <br />Is fennel, mint, or balm, <br />Kept in the thrifty calm <br />Of hollows, in the spring; <br />Or by old houses pent. <br />Dear is its ancient scent <br />To folk that love the days forgot, <br />Nor think that God is not. <br /> <br />Sage, lavender, and rue, <br />For body’s hurt and ill, <br />For fever and for chill; <br />Rosemary, strange with dew, <br />For sorrow and its smart, <br />For breaking of the heart. <br />Yet pain, dearth, tears, all come to dust, <br />As even the herbs must. <br /> <br />Life-everlasting, too, <br />Windless, poignant, and sere, <br />That blows in the old year, <br />Townsmen, for me and you. <br />Why fret for wafting airs? <br />Why haste to sell our wares? <br />Captains and clerks, this shall befall; <br />This is the end of all. <br /> <br />Oh, this the end indeed! <br />Oh, unforgotten things, <br /> <br />Gone out of all the springs; <br />The quest, the dream, the creed! <br />Gone out of all the lands, <br />And yet safe in God’s hands; — <br />For shall the dull herbs live again, <br />And not the sons of men?<br /><br />Lizette Woodworth Reese<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/herbs/
