It was Volunteer Sunday today but we couldn’t go. We read this poem, The Glory of the Garden by Rudyard Kipling, with Ti on our last visit and so many lines seemed to fit the aims and philosophy of Community Roots. Here are the middle two verses.
And there you’ll see the gardeners, the men and ‘prentice boysTold off to do as they are bid and do it without noise ;For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows ;But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.
Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not madeBy singing:—” Oh, how beautiful,” and sitting in the shadeWhile better men than we go out and start their working livesAt grubbing weeds from gravel—paths with broken dinner—knives.There’s not a pair of legs so thin, there’s not a head so thick,There’s not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sickBut it can find some needful job that’s crying to be done,For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!
I hope you can follow the link to see the youngest volunteers at Roots.
