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SUMMERS FILLED WITH WAR: THE WASP: REMEMBRANCE (Extracts from "The Garden" by Vita Sackville-West) So in the gardener's more persistent way Where man not always is the conqueror, We plodded as we could, and fought Permanent enemies, of weed and wings The strangling bindweed and the running strands Of crowsfoot, and the suckers of the rose, Inordinate thorns that mangle our poor hands; All these must every rank Summer bring, And August duly brought Swarms of a summer enemy, of those Small samurai in lacquered velvet dressed, Innumerable in their vermin breed As fierce and fiery as a spark of gleed, Scavengers on a gourmandising quest There's not a rhyme to "wasp" in English tongue, Poor wasp, unloved, unsung! Only the homely proverb celebrates These little dragons of the summer day That each man hates. "Of many a man it might be said No one loved him till he was dead, But of a wasp not even then As it is said of many men". So let me write the wasp his apologue In blend of hatred, wonder, and of jest; That moral fable never told Of little Satan in his black and gold, His coat of tigerskin. Let me discover Some evil beauty in his striped array, Bad angel of the winged air-borne tribe, And have the honour of his earliest scribe. Evil he is; to him was evil given If evil be within our judgement, when We seek to sift the purposes of heaven. Exquisite wasp! that our fine fruit devours, His taste at least as elegant as ours. And if he should not strike at meddling men Why did his Maker arm him with a sting? He's small, he's vicious, he's an easy prey; With greater skill our ingenuity , Kills with one crack so intricate a thing; So difficult to make, beyond our powers. So stay your hand, your condemnation stay: Even the wasp, like dog, must have his day, And as I know that Shakespeare, country lad, So English-sane, so universal-mad, Had wasps in mind, when he of rascal thieves Wrote, that go suck the subtle blood of the grape. These were no alien or Athenian thieves; They were the wasps on plums on Stratford walls. He stung his fingers, stealing ripened fruit, No mine or thine, A schoolboy's loot; He was a boy, and took his boyish shape Of mind into his verse, as poets do, Using small instances to make a line.