Elegy In A Botanic Gardens

By Kenneth Slessor

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.