THE SPECIALIST

There was a girl I used to know,
Whose pet ambition was to grow
Within her tiny garden plot
The plants that no one else had got.

She had no use for common stuff
The other folk thought good enough:
She searched the papers through and through
For things exotic, strange and new.

One night she heard somebody say
That someone, just across the way,
Had got PHLEBITIS-’twas a word
Of which she hadn’t even heard.

PHLEBITIS! That was something new!
Now was it red or was it blue?
The only plant she hadn’t got-
She ordered it, upon the spot.

CURSE OF EDEN

METHINKS a garden, should it not
Have been a lovesome thing, God wot!
Then why are we, who till the soil,
Condemned to such unending toil?

Why are the lily and the rose
Beset by such relentless foes?
And why the frost, and why the drought?
These are things I can’t make out.

Life is a pageantry of pests;
The gardener never really rests:
We sow in sorrow, reap in pain—
The Curse of Eden comes again.