‘Where are they now?’

— Photo by Romanceor

I made a garden just to keep about me
The birds and things I love, all summer long.

I doubt not they'd live well enough without me;
How would I live without them -- their sweet song?

I made a garden and had my own flowers --
All that I cared to pick and more too, there.
Most of them died and fell in scented showers
Upon the beds, and colored the warm air.

Mine was not such a garden as I'd thought of --
A deep wild garden that no hand has trimmed
In many years -- a tangle that is wrought of
Old fashioned flowers 'neath old trees, barren limbed

But so my flowers brought the insects winging,
The butterflies, the neighbors' murmuring bees,
And birds one must not cage or they cease singing,
I asked no more, well satisfied with these.

My garden my fair garden! I saw wither
Flower, leaf, and branch, and from the maple bough
Leaves race across the bare beds none knows whither.
The lives I entertained where are they now?

— “A Summer’s Garden,’’ by Robert Frost (1874-1963)