I have a garden of my own, But so with roses overgrown, And lilies, that you would it guess To be a little wilderness.

As lines, so loves oblique, may well Themselves in every angle greet; But ours, so truly parallel, Though infinite, can never meet.

He nothing common did, or mean, / Upon that memorable scene, / But with his keener eye / The axe's edge did try.

Ye country comets, that portend No war, nor prince's funeral, Shining unto no higher end Than to presage the grasses fall. . . .

So much one man can do that does both act and know.

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green glade ... Such was that happy garden-state.

Though I carry always some ill-nature about me, yet it is, I hope, no more than is in this world necessary for a preservative.