My Virtual Reading Room

Garden Experience

It was difficult to work with; it was stubborn yellow clay,
So we dug it from the garden and we threw it all away,
And we bought a load of top soil, very rich and very black,
Which with scarcely any effort, would with blossoms pay us back.

Yellow clay is dull to work with and it bakes beneath the sun
And the man who has to fight it knows his work seems never done.
So we threw it in the alley, for impatient folks are we,
And we wanted flowers in summer without such a costly fee.

But our roses failed to flourish and we saw them pine and die,
And we called upon a gardener who knew to tell us why.
He looked the bushes over in his wise and kindly way
And said, "If you want roses what you need is yellow clay."

In our ignorance we'd fancied only richer soils were good.
That the heavy clay held virtue we had never understood.
It had seemed so dull and stubborn that we found to our dismay
We had had the stuff for roses, but had thrown it all away.

(Edgar A. Guest)