216      The Mower against Gardens

Luxurious Man, to bring his Vice in use,

Did after him the World seduce:

And from the fields the Flow’rs and Plants allure,

Where Nature was most plain and pure.

5        He first enclos’d within the Gardens square

A dead and standing pool of Air:

And a more luscious Earth for them did knead,

Which stupifi’d them while it fed.

The Pink grew then as double as his Mind;

10         The nutriment did change the kind.

With strange perfumes he did the Roses taint.

And Flow’rs themselves were taught to paint.

The Tulip, white, did for complexion seek;

And learn’d to interline its cheek:

15     Its Onion root they then so high did hold,

That one was for a Meadow sold.

Another World was search’d, through Oceans new,

To find the Marvel of Peru.

And yet these Rarities might be allow’d,

20         To Man, that sov’raign thing and proud;

Had he not dealt between the Bark and Tree,

Forbidden mixtures there to see.

No Plant now knew the Stock from which it came;

He grafts upon the Wild the Tame:

25    That the uncertain and adult’rate fruit

Might put the Palate in dispute.

His green Seraglio has its Eunuchs too;

Lest any Tyrant him out-doe.

And in the Cherry he does Nature vex,

30         To procreate without a Sex.

’Tis all enforc’d; the Fountain and the Grot;

While the sweet Fields do lye forgot:

Where willing Nature does to all dispence

A wild and fragrant Innocence:

35       And Fauns and Faryes do the Meadows till,

More by their presence then their skill.

Their Statues polish’d by some ancient hand,

May to adorn the Gardens stand:

But howso’ere the Figures do excel,

40          The Gods themselves with us do dwell.