The environment is whom we are to please to be

As good or bad as we believe, behave ourselves;

Is an out-running gale, a gust, riposte, of winter rain

Carnal unnumbered feast, beech mast for pig and pail

*

This is our gig, and to be taken running;

Who are the summer’s mayflies, duck-pool cruisers, compound eyes

Hoverers over surfaces of hours

*

Fancy bees’ knees; a conversational squadron,

Audacious sunflower Day-Glo spiders donned by stems

*

We’re as good as the kale that fills the yard space, toiled to cultivate

The everlasting meat and garnish from the lavish leaf

In a buffering world of virtue dangling on its hope of chain

*

Spectacular our freedom opens Indies’ trade routes

Ours the far seas, the forward breeze, the corsair’s destination,

By the guidance of stars, that know what mars, what is to be

*

Matrimony a troth for better, worse, binds till we pass away;

We have wedded the earth and bedded her, have brought forth surfeit, and array;

In the parable good and bad things hang there ripe upon the tree

*

And the life of the bee is honey, and the Sunflower’s glee its seed,

Berries declare and nectars lure by hues to roosting birds

And all the land of autumn’s tea and cakes with store and spree

*

But the crushed poor starling’s resting place lies naked by the wall

When that nature’s doings promulgate its ultimate condition

Before which all our human vision crumbles abjectly

*

Then the blush no longer ravishes, and the hale and bluff consider

The rush in flow, debouchment of, a sentient lifeblood river

And all that folly funeral vestment tenants leave behind them

*

The enlargements of the vestiges of worlds by plunder gotten;

And we would sup these sweetly potent poisons to their bottom

Until all floating memory elapses, overthrown

*

The strong armed man’s the king then, and our willingness his crown

And forgetfulness of stupor concurs humour honour churls

Free-handed greed does ransack, makes rapine for all it’s worth

*

Until betimes a Second Birth to nations, peoples, times

And come again our courteous sweet Messiah, our great Friend

Has overturned the tables in the temples of our brains

*

Till then the environment is whom we please to be

As good or bad as we believe, behave ourselves;

Is an out-running gale; a gust, riposte, of winter rain

Carnal unnumbered feast, beech mast for pig and pail