Where thou may’st warble, eat, and dwell.
“The espaliers, and the standards, all
Are thine; the range of lawn and park:
The unnetted blackhearts ripen dark,
All thine, against the garden wall.”
A few minutes later he was in the garden himself, scenting the dew and the fragrant earth, listening to the blackbird—his own blackbird, that meant to be his cherished guest all that spring and summer—to the singing of a skylark high above the allotment field, and to the distant murmur of the rooks. The garden was in disorder—what delicious work there would be in it!—fruit-trees to prune, vegetables to plant, a big strawberry bed to tend, borders to make gay. All this he would fain have done himself, even though he knew as little of gardening as he did of Hebrew; why not learn to do it himself, make mistakes and profit by them? So he had written to the friendly Parson of the village, who had been looking after his interests for him; but the Parson would not bear of it, and he was despotic in his own parish. He had decided that old Joseph Bates was to start the work and direct the Poet’s enthusiasm into rational channels; and after breakfast Joseph and the Poet were to meet. “A worthy old man,” the Parson had written; “you can’t do better than give him a little employment; if he gives you any trouble, send for me and I’ll settle him.”
So after breakfast—a delicious one it was, that first breakfast in the country—the Poet left his wife to her household duties, and went again into the garden to face Mr. Bates. He made his way towards his yew hedge, where he could see the old fellow busy clearing the ground beneath it of a melancholy tangle of decayed weeds. As he reached the hedge, one blackbird and then another flew out with awkward impetuosity and harsh chuckles, and the Poet stopped suddenly, sorry to have disturbed his friends.
Joseph touched his hat. “Good morning, Sir,” he said, “and welcome to your garden, if I may make so free. I’ve known it any time these fifty years and more, and my father he worked in it long afore I were born. We’d use to say as the Bateses belonged to this here bit of land years and years ago, when times was good for the poor man; but ’tis all gone from us, and here be I a working on it for hire. And ’tis powerful changed since I were a lad, and none for the better either. Look at this here yew hedge now; ’tis five and twenty year ago since I told Mr. Gale as ’twouldn’t do no good but to harbour birds, and here they be. And here they be,” he repeated, as another blackbird came scurrying out of the hedge a little further down.
At this point Joseph broke off his discourse, thrust his arm into the hedge, lifting the thick branches here and there, and pulled out a lump of fresh green moss, the first preparations for a blackbird’s nest.
“Ah, ye blackguards,” he cried, “at it already, are ye? I’ll be bound there are a dozen or two of ye somewhere or another on the premises. You see, Sir, ’tis their nater, when they’ve had it all their own way so long, and no one to look after ’em, a year come next June. They take it as the garden belongs to them; they’re like rats in a stack-yard, and you won’t have a thing to call your own by summer. But don’t you take on, Sir,” he went on, seeing the Poet’s visage lengthening; “we’ll nip ’em in the bud in no time. There’s my grandson Dan, a wonderful smart lad to find nests—you give him a sixpence, Sir, or what you please, and he’ll have every nest in the garden in an hour or two. Take it in time, Sir, as the doctor says to my wife when her rheumatics is a coming on.”