Explore "In Lupum" by Robert Louis Stevenson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
BEYOND the gates thou gav'st a field to till; / I have a larger on my window-sill.
A farm, d'ye say? Is this a farm to you, / Where for all woods I spay one tuft of rue, / And that so rusty, and so small a thing, / One shrill cicada hides it with a wing; / Where one cucumber covers all the plain; / And where one serpent rings himself in vain / To enter wholly; and a single snail / Eats all and exit fasting to the pool? / Here shall my gardener be the dusty mole.
My only ploughman the... mole.
Here shall I wait in vain till figs be set, / And till the spring disclose the violet.
Through all my wilds a tameless mouse careers, / And in that narrow boundary appears, / Huge as the stalking lion of Algiers, / Huge as the fabled boar of Calydon.
And all my hay is at one swoop impresst / By one low-flying swallow for her nest, / Strip god Priapus of each attribute / Here finds he scarce a pedestal to foot.
The gathered harvest scarcely brims a spoon; / And all my vintage drips in a cocoon.
Generous are you, but I more generous still: / Take back your farm and stand me half a gill!