I'll have the primrose grow in grass,
Held up in hands of soft, green moss.
If in twelve months no green moss grows
On that dark stone, then out it goes.
Above my window-top there'll be
A creeper that grows wild and free;
Until so many leaves have grown,
They'll make a curtain half-way down.
In that round corner place shall grow
A holly tree, for Winter's snow;
There shall the Robin Redbreast sing,
Till snow - that feathers everything
That has no life-blood pulsing through -
Would feather his warm feathers too!
This lime, now old, I'll slowly kill
With creeper-sucker leaves; until
The leaves that grow around its bole,
Makes it a child all beautiful -
When with her naked knee that's brown,
She stands with half her stocking down.
A lovelier death no man shall see -
Than seen in my half-strangled tree.