"The Garden" Ezra Pound

"The Garden" is a critique of the class system. The first line of the poem, "Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall," is a simile that imagines the upper-class woman in the poem as a piece of expensive cloth stuck against a wall. A skein is a loose piece of fabric usually cut from a larger piece of fabric, which characterizes the woman as being separated from the rest of society because of her class. And the end of the line, "blown against the wall," shows that Pound thinks of the upper-class as immobile and is figuratively against a wall. 

In the next three lines, 

She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,

And she is dying piece-meal

                of a sort of emotional anemia.

Pound describes the woman as weak in three different ways. The first is that "She walks by the railing of a path," which could mean that she isn't able to walk on her own, and she relies on the railing's support to walk. The next weak image is "she is dying piece-meal," which means that she is falling apart and it shows that she is distressed. The last weak image in this stanza is that she seems to have "emotional anemia," and non-medical anemia is essentially synonymous with weak, so the line suggests that her mind isn't right. So far, the image Pound has painted of this woman is that she is incapable of acting independently, falling apart, and emotionally weak. 

In the second stanza, The poem sets up the lower class. The first line in the second stanza, "And round about there is a rabble," shows that in the situation the speaker is observing, which is in a royal garden in the UK, has turned into a public display of some kind, and I'm not sure absolutely sure what. The definition of rabble is a mob or an assault on someone, and we know that they are in an exclusive garden but are"the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor," actually mobbing in the garden or is it metaphorical for what Pound believes will happen in the future.

In the third stanza, Pound brings the woman's separation from society back with the line "She would like someone to speak to her," which shows the upper-class as weak again, and then immediately shows her fear the speaker because of class with the 11th and 12th line.

And is almost afraid that I

                will commit that indiscretion.