Summary

The poem begins with the statement that seeking worldly success is done "vainly" (1). When men win accomplishments in society, they are crowned with boughs from a single tree. The speaker believes this is worthless compared to life in nature, where one can have access to all the different trees and other plants that symbolize achievement.

Better than achievement, though, is rest, according to the speaker. He used to seek out "innocence" and "quiet" in the company of other people (9-10). However, he now recognizes this was futile. Instead, he realizes that these virtues can only be found in nature. All of civilization is "rude," unrefined and undesirable, compared to the pleasures of "solitude" he finds in nature (15-16).

Analysis

“The Garden” belongs to an artistic tradition called pastoralism. It was particularly beloved by English poets of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, but has...