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Kenneth Slessor - Elegy In A Botanic Gardens
Work rating: Low

THE smell of birds` nests faintly burning 
 Is autumn. In the autumn I came 
 Where spring had used me better, 
 To the clear red pebbles and the men of stone 
 And foundered beetles, to the broken Meleager 
 And thousands of white circles drifting past, 
 Cold suns in water; even to the dead grove 
 Where we had kissed, to the Tristania tree 
 Where we had kissed so awkwardly, 
 Noted by swans with damp, accusing eyes, 
 All gone to-day; only the leaves remain, 
 Gaunt paddles ribbed with herringbones 
 Of watermelon-pink. Never before 
 Had I assented to the hateful name 
 Meryta Macrophylla, on a tin tag. 
 That was no time for botany. But now the schools, 
 The horticulturists, come forth 
 Triumphantly with Latin. So be it now, 
 Meryta Macrophylla, and the old house, 
 Ringed with black stone, no Georgian Headlong Hall 
 With glass-eye windows winking candles forth, 
 Stuffed with French horns, globes, air-pumps, telescopes 
 And Cupid in a wig, playing the flute, 
 But truly, and without escape, 
 THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM, 
 Repeated dryly in Roman capitals, 
 THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM.
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