THE GARDEN.

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
      Tof a sort of emotional anemia. 

And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth. 

In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
      Twill commit that indiscretion. 

The first line of the Pound’s poem compares his first protagonist, a young woman to a length of silk-an elegant and exquisite material which serves as a simile suggesting the woman’s class and social position. She is walking along the rails of a Kensington garden-an exclusively upper class area in central London. The silk is loose and is being blown, much like the young woman who seems to be somewhat lost and alone, drifting away from her bourgeoisie expectations. Pound ends the stanza with another metaphor, this time directed at the woman’s mental state. Literally, anemia is a condition in which red blood cells in your body are lacking, causing the sufferer to feel weak and tired. In the poem, the protagonist appears to feel fatally tired of her position, the elitist ideals that govern her life.

In the second stanza, attention is drawn to an indeterminate number of lower-class children that linger n the streets that surround her. The last line of the poem states that, the poet is referring to the dissipating bourgeoisie in Britain at the time, when contrasted with the ever-increasing lower classes.

Ezra Pound then returns to his protagonist, opening the next stanza where the British upper class, in order to protect their noble rank, were adamant t keep marriages within their own exclusive class, leading to a limited and often undesirable group of potential spouses. He then refers to the woman’s excessive boredom, a trait often identifiable in the youth of the elite class, a boredom that emerges with an overly sheltered and comfortable life.

The final stanza opens with the woman’s desire to speak to somebody. At this moment, another character, an older male, is introduced. He appears t be of the same social class as the children. She has noticed this man, but because of her fear of improper conduct, the fear that has been instilled in her, she appears afraid of the possibility that he might say something. Both her desire and fear are both witnessed by this man, whose words from the last line of the poem.