Summary Of The Poem My Garden

Even though Sarah Binks is an imaginary poet who died of young age and lived in the 19th century described in the book by the author, Paul Hiebert, her thoughts and ideas expressed mostly in her poems and stories greatly allied with today’s 21st century’s ideas and thoughts. One of her greatest works, My Garden, portrays one’s compassionate thoughts for nature and expresses the voices of the people who farmed and lived on the Prairies. This lyrical poem is written beautifully yet mysteriously for one will find little traces of its theme for the first few readings. Binks’ usage of dictions that contain complicated symbols and themes are hidden throughout the poem that one can also be easily confused by it. Nevertheless, they will make the readers …show more content…
Written in a lyrical ode style often giving metaphors to the current world, she uses the garden to symbolize the Earth. We as humans tend to plant more than we need and produce problems on the Earth that is once with only “a little blade of grass” (Line 1). In the beginning of the poem, Binks forces the focus of the garden to only a small blade of grass living in the world of freedom and innocence. It much portrays the starting point of the Earth; free of pollutions and waste products. In line 4, the ‘big onion’ represents the outcome of the narrator’s expectations, yet with a little further hope that ‘I’ will also benefit from it. Binks then changes perspectives and the narrator becomes ‘we’. With ‘we’, one can do much more; planting the coconut, oats, and apples. Nonetheless, it also absorbs problems into the garden. With threading, ‘we’ tries to ignore the growing problems. Binks then brings some irony at this point; line 13-14. Emphasizing the ‘too much’, readers know that the narrators dislike the situation that is happening to the garden. With ‘too much exertion fraught’, ‘we’ start to ignore and give up on the garden even though ‘we’ know that the garden is being ruined by us. Making this a connection to society, we often know the problems happening in our environment, but we don’t fix it because many do not associate directly with us yet. For conclusion, Binks describes the garden in ruins—full of ‘weeds’. As readers, we are sympathetic towards this garden and realizing that our planet is also having the same situation. We also reveal one of the themes—that an action involves a consequence—yet we often don’t realize it—‘for oft we reap and didn’t sow’—. Binks tells her predictions for the world that all is too late if we all become ignorant to nature. This poem reveals not only her distinctive styles of writing poetry, but also her vision for the environment around