It is a seed that’s best not planted
That grows within the shade
And in a lot long since abandoned
Near some New England glade.

The stolid soul which passes by
Appraising fresh the air
On age-old hillocks, flocks with all
The brightened leaves up there.

He contemplates completed lives
From vantage of the bough
And sees in fate a merriment
That moss stones will endow.

“The slightest turf might be a house,
The merest thought a course;
The wind does aught to whip a boat
Thus anchored to its course.”

But not for wind nor for the turf
His parcel left to be;
The builder of the granite fence
Threw out economy

And hills and plots and autumn leaves
For closure from the trial
And left his father’s woods behind
To trek the Earth-shorn mile.