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.

Poems by Reginald Arkell                                         Back to top