Classic Poem

There are bandits in the bracken, there are gunmen in the swales,
There are footpads in the pasture lots and dryads in the fern,
There are ogres in the cedar swamps and little men with tails,
And sprites and pucks and prancing pans and pixies of the churn.

There are black and orange monsters in the paddock by the spring,
There are dragons in the orchards with forty thousand toes,
There are flying imps of darkness that buzz and bite and sting,
And a roaring band of satyrs with grape-vine clothes.

Beware the bonny briar bush, the crimson caves of clover,
The trailing nets of purple pea, the black arms of pine,
The yellow deeps, of buttercup, the darning-needle rover,
The thistle thorns and nettle nips and bee-haunted thyme.

Beware the tiger lilies and the leaping leopard frogs,
The bullrush in the bogan and the scarecrow in the wheat,
Beware the witches' butter and their lanterns in the bogs,
But, more deadly far than nixies and more dangerous than dogs,
Beware of black-eyed Susan and the golden Marguerite!