Top Quotes & Sayings by Ursula Bethell

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a New Zealander poet Ursula Bethell.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
Ursula Bethell

Mary Ursula Bethell, was a New Zealand social worker and poet. She settled at the age of 50 at Rise Cottage on the Cashmere Hills near Christchurch, with her companion Effie Pollen, where she created a sheltered garden with views over the city and towards the Southern Alps, and began writing poems about the landscape. Although she considered herself "by birth and choice English", and spent her life travelling between England and New Zealand, she was one of the first distinctively New Zealand poets, seen today as a pioneer of its modern poetry.

'Established' is a good word, much used in garden books, 'the plant, when established' ... Oh, become established quickly, quickly, garden! For I am fugitive, I am very fugitive - Those that come after me will gather these roses, And watch, as I do now, the white wisteria Burst, in the sunshine, from its pale green sheath. Planned. Planted. Established. Then neglected, Till at last the loiterer by the gate will wonder At the old, old cottage, the old wooden cottage, And say, 'One might build here, the view is glorious; This must have been a pretty garden once.
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