UNIVERSITY OP
CAL^ORNIA
SAN DIEGO
presented to the
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
SAN DIEGO
by
Miss Nancy Davidson
IN PRAISE OF GARDENS
In Praise of
Gardens
Compiled by
Temple Scott
New York
The Baker & Taylor Co.
1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
Published, March, 19x0
THE TROW PRESS. NEW YORK
TO
JOYCE
FROM HER ADMIRING
FATHER
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The editor takes pleasure in expressing his
grateful thanks to the publishers of Collier's
Weekly for courteous permission to include
the poem by Mr. Bliss Carman ; to Mr.
Bliss Carman for his courtesy ; to The John
Lane Co. for permission to reprint the poem
by Laurence Hope ; to Mr. Mitchell Ken-
nedy for permission to include the poem by
Mr. J. G. Neihardt, and to The Macmil-
lan Co. for permission to reprint the poem
by Mr. Robert Bridges.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction 13
The Garden of Joy and Delight 21
The Garden of Love 63
The Garden of Home 105
Gardens Lost and Found . 151
The Garden of Peace 165
The Garden of God and the Soul . .181
INTRODUCTION
" WITHOUT Sun I keep silence," says an old
sun-dial. "Though silent I speak," says another.
In these two mottoes lies the secret of the power
and the living charm of all gardens ; a secret, the
meaning of which is precipitated by the alchemy
of silence. For a garden is silent to the ear
only; to every other sense it is eloquent and ex-
quisitely musical. " Silence," says Carlyle, " is
the element in which all great things fashion
themselves together; that at length they may
emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the day-
light of life." It is in silence that a Garden
blossoms, without boasting of what it is going to
do. Once it has blossomed it speaks the univer-
sal language that all can understand.
A Garden is our happiest means for evoking
Nature's mystic as well as Nature's sensible
music. It is in itself the consummate eloquence
of the living silence of sunlight a silence in
which sunlight, with the aid of earth's elements,
expresses itself in the lovely colors of flowers.
What sound is to the ear that color may be said
[13]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
to be to the eye; and a garden, lovingly tended,
may become a very orchestra of colors which
varies its symphonic movements with the varying
seasons of the year. Flowers may be said to be
the words of the poetry of sunlight, and their
colors its music. They come and they go; but
in the interval a perfect expression has found
utterance, and the vision or song, call it what
you will, has spoken its appeal, has revealed its
message.
A garden is also eloquent to the ear, for it is
the home of song-birds. Here come and nest the
happy people of the sky, accompanying, with
their vocal music, the thoughts and emotions
which the garden, by its silence, breathes into us.
They pipe their lays to our mood either of morn-
ing exultation or of evening's meditation. The
mystery is that they come upon us not as in-
truders or disturbers in this retreat of quietude,
but rather as companions in labor or as friends
in sympathy. I know no more joyous encourager
to effort than the lark's song falling down from
a brilliant summer evening's sky; and I know of
no more deeply touching sense of kinship with
nature than that which comes over us with the
parting trills of the thrush on some golden,
[14]
INTRODUCTION
tremblingly, peaceful autumnal evening, when his
notes strike the stilled air at intervals as if they
were the call of some far-distant Angelus.
" Come unto me all ye that labor and are
heavy-laden," says the Garden, " and I will give
you rest." Not the rest of apathy, nor yet the
listlessness of ennui, but the recuperative rest,
the rest that we so need after the tiring turmoil
of the day's labor in the city's forges. And the
Garden will keep its word. Its silence and its
perfumes are as a healing balm. And yet it is
a busy silence, for it is the silence of creation, in
which life is growing into blossoming, and in
which spirit is transforming itself into splendid
matter. This wonderful operation, as it im-
presses itself on you, will touch you to responsive
impulses, and your rest will be energizing. This
is the true delight we experience from gardens,
that it makes us aware of our own creative pow-
ers and through this of our kinship with God.
We say that a garden is delightful, but are
rarely conscious of what we mean by the word.
If we analyze the sensation we shall find that
it is born of seeing the sheer beauty of life which
a garden is forever revealing. For here we be-
come somehow aware of the joy of mere living.
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
In the splendid modesty of the rose we are
touched with the sense of its utter contentment
to live and to die, if but it has fulfilled itself of
its color and perfume. In its fulfillment we see
its glory. We sense this dimly at first, but later,
when we have dwelt in gardens more frequently,
we are able to spell out the mystical language
the garden is speaking through its flowers and
trees and bushes and shrubs. " Would you know
what I am ? " asks the rose, in effect, and its life
of a day is the answer, and the only answer. It
has given itself in explaining itself. Is there any
other explanation possible? Not in the labora-
tories of men of science, nor yet in learned trea-
tises will you find the secret of the rose ; but you
will find it in a garden if you look for it with
the eyes of your soul. And in finding its secret,
you will have found your own secret also. That
is why a garden impresses us with a feeling of
sanctity; and that also is why a garden is delight-
ful. It helps you to find yourself. The mystery
of all things is the mystery of your self; and
through self-realization you come to a knowl-
edge of the beauty in all life, which is to blossom
with fragrance " in purple and red." For the
secret of life lies not so much in being as it does
[16.]
INTRODUCTION
in becoming; in growing by ever new expressions
of the many-sided meaning of being. And out
of the consciousness of growth is born your joy.
" In green old gardens, hidden away
From sight of revel, and sound of strife —
Here have I leisure to breathe and move,
And to do my work in a nobler way;
To sing my songs, and to say my say;
To dream my dreams, and to love my love ;
To hold my faith and to live my life,
Making the most of its shadowy day."
This confession of the poet to the many appeals
to which a garden responds, to the many aspects
of our nature which it satisfies, explains what I
have tried to hint of its fulfilling influences. In
a garden we are free of the stress and sight of
men's sordid bickerings; we are released from
the prison of depressing and debilitating conven-
tions. In a Garden we are brought into primal
relations with primal things; we understand the
joy of simply living, like children do, and the
one response to that is song. The blitheness of
being is in our blood. Here we may dream our
dreams forgetful of our past failures, heartened
by the encouraging hope here given us of what we
INTRODUCTION
may do. Responsive to the revealing mystery of
the place our hearts open to love, and we find
peace in an abiding faith. For we also are of
the company of life ; what the rose can do, surely
we may succeed in doing. Because of these
influences a garden is strength-giving, strength-
renewing. Life is, as it were, at its fountain-
head here. Nature and Nature's God are en-
gaged in the mystery of creation — the ground is
holy ground — the growing bush is the burning
bush out of which God's voice comes to bid us
take heart and be of good courage. And with
it all is here also ineffable peace; the peace of
gladness and the peace of rest.
" Here I untrammel,
Here I pluck loose the body's cerementing,
And break the tomb of life; here I shake off
The bur o' the world, man's congregation shun,
And to the antique order of the dead
I take tongueless vows ; my cell is set
Here in thy bosom; my little trouble is ended
In a little peace."
Here also, however, we may take the speech-
ful vows, not to the antique order of the dead,
but to the antique order of the living. To gar-
[18]
INTRODUCTION
dens gravitate as by a natural impulse all true
lovers. Beneath the canopy of their leafy bow-
ers vows have been exchanged and troths plighted
which have meant all that life holds for mortals.
The Garden of Peace of the present is the Gar-
den of Love of the Past. Memory pauses to live
again its youth's happiness and its youth's pas-
sion ; and the landscape takes on anew the radi-
ance of the glory of bygone days.
And what more fitting place for children than
a garden ? The mere apposition of the words
" children " and " garden " satisfies our sense of
the fitness of things. Surely a garden was first
made for children — for those pure in heart who
live in innocence, and for those chastened in
spirit whom experience has taught that the child-
like life is nearest to the true life. Thus from
the Garden of Peace through the Garden of
Love we plant our Garden of Joy. And in the
Garden of Joy men and women, like Enoch of
old, walk with God.
" A Garden is a lovesome thing, God wot !
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Ferned grot —
[19]
INTRODUCTION
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not —
Not God ! in gardens ! when the eve is cool ?
Nay, but I have a sign;
'Tis very sure God walks in mine."
TEMPLE SCOTT.
[20]
The Garden of Joy and Delight
OF • SHADE • AND • SUNSHINE • FOR • EACH • HOUR
SEE • HERE • A • MEASURE • MADE :
THEN • WONDER • NOT • IF • LIFE • CONSIST
OF • SUNSHINE • AND • OF • SHADE.
EST • HORA
The Garden of Alcinoiis
(Translation from the Moorish by Walter Harris of Tangier)
Close to the gates a spacious garden lies,
From storms defended and inclement skies.
Four acres was the allotted space of ground,
Fenced with a green enclosure all around.
Tall thriving trees confessed the fruitful mould;
The reddening apple ripens here to gold.
Here the blue fig with luscious juice o'erflows,
With deeper red the full pomegranate glows;
The branch here bends beneath the mighty pear,
And verdant olives flourish round the year.
The balmy spirit of the western gale
Eternal breathes on fruits, untaught to fail;
Each dropping pear a following pear supplies,
On apples apples, figs on figs arise:
The same mild season gives the blooms to blow,
The buds to harden, and the fruits to grow.
Ordered vines in equal ranks appear,
With all the united labours of the year;
Some to unload the fertile branches run,
Some dry the blackening clusters in the sun;
[23]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Others to tread the liquid harvest join;
The groaning presses foam with floods of wine ;
Here are the vines in early flower descried,
Here grapes discoloured on the sunny side,
And there in autumn's richest purple dyed;
Beds of all various herbs, for ever green,
In beauteous order terminate the scene.
Two plenteous fountains the whole prospect
crowned :
This through the garden leads its stream around,
Visits each plant, and waters all the ground.
HOMER'S The Odyssy, Bk. VII.
So on a day, right in the morwe tyde,
Unto a gardyn that was ther bisyde,
In which that they hadde maid hir ordinaunce
Of vitaille, and of other purveiaunce,
They goon and playe here al the longe day;
And this was on the sixte morwe of May,
Which May hadde peynted with his softe shouers
This gardyn, full of leves and of floures,
And craft of mannes hand so curiously
Arrayed hadde this gardyn, trewely,
That never was ther gardyn of swich prys
[24]
OUR • TIMES • AT • HAND
But if it were the verray Paradys.
The odour of floures and the fresshe sighte
Wolde hav maked any herte lighte
That ever was born, but if to greet oiknesse,
Or to greet sorwe, helde it in distresse;
So full it was with beautee with pleasaunce.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
The Canterbury Tales.
The Franklin s Tale.
The garden was by mesuryng
Right evene and square; in compassing
It was as long as it was large.
Of fruyt hadde every tree his charge,
But it were any hidous tree,
Of which ther were two or three.
There were, and that wote I full well,
Of pome garnettys a full gret dell,
That is a fruyt full well to lyke,
Namely to folk whanne they ben sike.
And trees there were of gret foisoun
That baren nottes in her sesoun
Such as men note mygges call,
That swote of savour ben withhalle;
[25]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
And almanderes gret plnete,
Fyges, and many a date tree,
These waxen, if men hadde nede,
Thorough the gardyn in length and brede,
There was eke waxyng many a spice,
As clowe-gelofre, and lycorice,
Gyngevre, and greyn de Paradys,
Canell, and setewale of prys,
And many a spice delitable,
To eten whan men rise fro table.
And many homly trees ther were
That peches, coynes, and apples beere,
Medlers, plowmes, perys chesteynis,
Chen's, of which many oon fayne is,
Notes, aleys, and bolas,
That for to seen it was solas;
With many high lorer and pyn
Was renged clene all that gardyn,
With cipres and with oliveris,
Of which that nygh no plente heere is.
There were elmes grete and stronge,
Maples, asshe, oke, aspe, planes longe,
Pyne ew, popler, and lyndes faire,
And othere trees full many a payre —
What shude I tel you more of it?
There were so many trees yit,
[26],
MEMOR • ESTO • BREVIS • JEVI
That I shulde al encombred be
Or I had rekened every tree.
These trees were sette, that I devyse,
One from another in assyse;
Fyve fadome or sixe, I trowe so;
But they were hye and great also,
And for to kepe out wel the sonne
The croppes were so thicke y-ronne,
And every braunche in other knette,
And ful of grene leves sette,
That sonne myght there none discende,
Lest it the tender grasses shende.
There myght men does and roes y-se,
And of squyrels ful grat plente
From bowe to bowe alwaye lepynge;
Connes there were also plaiynge,
That comyn out of her clapers
Of sondrie colours and maners,
And maden many a tourneiyng
Upon the fresshe grasse spryngyng.
In places sawe I welles there
In whiche there no frogges were,
And fayre in shadowe was every welle.
But I ne can the nombre telle
Of stremys smal, that by devyse
[27]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Myrthe had done come through condyse;
Of vvhiche the water in rennyng
Gan make a noyse ful lykyng.
About the brinkes of these welles
And by the streme over al elles
Spronge up the grasse, as thicke y-set
And softe as any veluet,
On whiche men myght his lemmon lay
As on a fetherbed to pley,
For the erthe was ful softe and swete
Through moisture of the welle wete
Spronge up the sote grene gras
As fayre, as thicke, as myster was.
But moche amended it the place
That therthe was of suche a grace
That it of floures hath plente,
That bothe in somer and wynter be.
There sprange the vyolet al newe,
And fresshe pervynke riche of hewe,
And floures yelowe, white and rede,
Suche plente grewe there never in mede.
Ful gaye was al the grounde, and queynt
And poudred, as men had it peynt
With many a fresshe and sondrie floure,
That casten up ful good savour.
[28]
MANEO • NEMINI
I wol nat longe holde you in fable
Of al this garden delectable,
I mote my tonge stynted nede;
For I ne maye withouten drede
Naught tellen you the beaute al,
Ne halfe the bounte there with al.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
" The Romaunt of the Rose
A garden saw I ful of blosmy bowes
Up— on a river in a grene mede,
There as ther swetnesse evermore y-now is;
With floures white, blewe, yelwe, and rede,
And colde welle-stremes, no-thyng dede,
That swommen ful of smale fisches lighte,
With fynnes rede and scales silver-brighte.
On every bough the briddes herde I synge,
With voys of aungel in her armonye;
Som besyede hem hir briddes forth to brynge.
The litel conyes to hir play gunne hye;
And further al aboute I gan aspye
The dredful roo, the buk, the hert and hynde,
Squerels and bestes smale of gentil kynde.
[29]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Of instruments of strenges in acord
Herde I so playe a ravisshyng swetnesse,
That God, that maker is of al and Lord,
Ne herde never beter, as I gesse;
Therewith a wynd, unnethe it myghte be lesse,
Made in the leves grene a noyse softe,
Acordant to the foules songe on-lofte.
The air of that place so attempre was
That never was grevaunce of heat ne cold;
There wex eek every holsom spice and gras;
Ne no man may ther wexe seek ne old,
Yit was ther joye more a thousand fold
Than man can telle ; ne never wolde it myghte,
But ay cleer day to any mannes sighte.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
The Parlement of Foules.
Then did I see a pleasant Paradize,
Full of sweete floures and daintiest delights,
Such as on earth man could no more devize,
With pleasures choyce to feed his cheerefull
sp rights:
Not that, which Merlin by his magicke slights
Made for the gentle Squire, to entertaine
His fayre Belphoebe, could this gardine staine.
[30]
NON • TARDUM • OPPERIOR
But O short pleasure, bought with lasting paine !
Why will hereafter anie flesh delight
In earthlie blis, and joy in pleasures vaine,
Since that I saw this gardine wasted quite,
That where it was scarce seemed anie sight?
That I, which once that beautie did beholde,
Could not from teares my melting eyes with-
holde.
EDMUND SPENSER.
The Ruines of Time.
There the most daintie Paradise on ground
It selfe doth offer to his sober eye,
In which all pleasures plenteously abound,
And none does others happinesse enoye;
The painted flowres, the trees upshooting hye,
The dales for shade, the hilles for breathing
space,
The trembling groves, the christall running by,
And, that which all faire workes doth most
aggrace,
The arb which all that wrought appeared in
no place.
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
One would have thought (so cunningly the rude
And scorned partes were mingled with the
fine)
That nature had for wantonesse ensude
Art, and that Art at nature did repine;
So striving each th' other to undermine,
Each did the others worke more beautify;
So difFring both in willes agreed in fine:
So all agreed, through sweete diversity,
This Gardin to adorne with all variety.
And in the midst of all a fountaine stood,
Of richest substance that on earth might bee,
So pure and shiny th^t the silver flood
Through every channel running one might see ;
Most goodly it with curious ymageree
Was overwrought, and shapes of naked boyes,
Of which some seemed with lively jollitee
To fly about, playing their wanton toyes,
Whyles others did themselves embay in liquid
joyes.
And over all of purest gold was spread
A trayle of yvie in his native hew;
For the rich metall was so coloured,
That wight who did not well avis'd it vew
[32]
OLD • TIME • IS • STILL • A-FLYING
Would surely deeme it to bee yvie trew:
Low his lascivious arms adown did creepe,
That themselves dipping in the silver dew,
Their fleecy flowres they fearefully did steepe,
Which drops of Christall seemed for wan-
tones to weep.
Infinit streames continually did well
Out of this fountaine, sweet and faire to see,
The which into an ample laver fell,
And shortly grew into so great quantitie,
That like a little lake it seemed to bee;
Whose depths exceeded not three cubits hight,
That through the waves one might the bottom
see,
All pav'd with Jaspar shining bright,
That seemed the fountaine in that sea did
sayle upright.
EDMUND SPENSER.
The Faerie Queene, Bk. II, Canto XII.
Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a crowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly
[33]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
After summer merrily:
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes:
With everything that pretty bin,
My lady sweet; arise:
Arise, arise.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me,
And tune his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither;
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
[34]
CEST • LHEURE • DE • BOIRE
Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to live i' the sun,
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleased with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither;
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Thus, thus begin the yearly rites
Are due to Pan on these bright nights;
His morn now riseth and invites
To sports, to dances, and delights:
All envious and profane, away,
This is the shepherd's holyday.
Strew, strew the glad and smiling ground
With every flower, yet not confound;
The primrose drop, the spring's own spouse,
Bright day's eyes and the lips of cows;
The garden-star, the queen of May,
The rose, to crown the holyday.
Drop, drop, you violets; change your hues,
Now red, now pale, as lovers use;
[35]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
And in your death go out as well
As when you lived unto the smell:
That from your odour all may say,
This is the shepherd's holyday.
BEN JONSON.
The Shepherd's Holyday.
My Garden sweet, enclosed with walles strong,
Embanked with branches to sytt and take my rest ;
The knots so enknotted, it cannot be exprest,
With arbors and ayles so pleasant and so dulce.
CAVENDISH.
If they to whom God gives fair gardens knew
The happy solace which sweet flowers bestow ;
Where pain depresses, and where friends are few,
To cheer the heart in weariness and woe.
ANON.
Me so oft my fancy drew
Here and there, that I ne'er knew
Where to place desire before
So that range it might no more;
[36]
SIC • LABITUR • .ETAS
But as he that passeth by
Where, in all her jollity,
Flora's riches in a row
Do in seemly order grow,
And a thousand flowers stand
Bending as to kiss his hand ;
Out of which delightful store
One he may take and no more;
Long he pauseth doubting whether
Of those fair ones he should gather.
First the Primrose courts his eyes,
Then a Cowslip he espies;
Next the Pansy seems to woo him,
Then Carnations bow unto him;
Which whilst that enamoured swain
From the stock intends to strain
(As half- fearing to be seen),
Prettily her leaves between
Peeps the Violet, pale to see
That her virtues slighted be;
Which so much his liking wins,
That to seize her he begins.
Yet before he stooped so low
He his wanton eye did throw
[37]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS t!T
On a stem that grew more high,
And the Rose did there espy.
Who, beside her precious scent,
To procure his eyes content
Did display her goodly breast,
When he found at full exprest
All the good that Nature showers
On a thousand other flowers;
Wherewith he affected takes it,
His beloved flower he makes it,
And without desire of more
Walks through all he saw before.
So I wandering but erewhere
Through the garden of this Isle,
Saw rich beauties I confess,
And in number numberless.
Yea, so differing lovely too,
That I had a world to do,
Ere I would set up my rest,
Where to choose and choose the best.
GEORGE WITHER.
Flos Florum.
[38]
SOL • GLORIA • MUNDI
I have a garden of my own,
But so with roses overgrown,
And lilies, that you would it guess
To be a little wilderness;
And all the spring-time of the year
It only loved to be there.
Among the beds of lilies I
Have sought it oft, where it should lie,
Yet could not, till itself would rise,
Find it, although before mine eyes;
For, in the flaxen lilies' shade,
It like a bank of lilies laid.
Upon the roses it would feed,
Until its lips e'en seem to bleed
And then to me 'twould boldly trip,
And print there roses on my lip,
But all its chief delight was still
On roses thus itself to fill,
And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold ;
Had it lived long, it would have been
Lilies without, roses within.
A. MARVELL.
The Nymph Complaining for the Death of
her Fawn.
[39]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
The Garden
Now vainly men themselves amaze,
To win the palm, the oak, or bays;
And their incessant labours see
Crowned from some single herb, or tree,
Whose short and narrow-verged shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all the flowers and trees do close,
To weave the garlands of repose !
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear?
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men.
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow;
Society is all but rude
To this delicious solitude.
No white nor red was ever seen
So amorous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress' name:
[40]
LEARN • TO • VALUE • YOUR • TIME
Little, alas! they know or heed,
How far these beauties her's exceed!
Fair trees ! wheres'e'er your bark I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.
When we have run our passion's heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat.
The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race;
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow;
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.
What wondrous life is this I lead !
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness;
[41]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas,
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does slide:
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate;
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises 'twere in one;
To live in paradise alone.
[42]
I • SHALL • GO • AND • RETURN
How well the skilful gardener drew
Of flowers, and herbs, this dial new;
Where, from above, the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run,
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we!
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers?
A. MARVELL.
Underneath this myrtle shade,
On flowery beds supinely laid,
With odorous oils my head o'erflowing,
And around it roses growing,
What should I do but drink away
The heat, and troubles of the day?
In this more than kingly state,
Love himself shall on me wait.
Fill to me, Love, nay fill it up;
And mingled cast into the cup,
Wit, and mirth, and noble fires,
Vigorous health, and gay desires.
The wheel of life no less will stay
In a smooth then rugged Way.
[43]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Since it equally does flee,
Let the motion pleasant be.
Why do precious ointments shower,
Nobler wines why do we pour,
Beauteous flowers why do we spread,
Upon the monuments of the dead?
Nothing they but dust can show,
Or bones that hasten to be so.
Crown me with roses whilst I live,
Now your wines -and ointments give.
After death I nothing crave,
Let me alive my pleasures have,
All are Stoics in the grave.
A. COWLEY.
The Wish
Well then; I now do plainly see,
This busy world and I shall ne'er agree;
The very honey of all earthly joy
Does of all meats the soonest cloy
And they, methinks, deserve my pity,
Who for it can endure the stings,
The crowd, and buz, and murmurings
Of this great hive, the city.
[44]
LIVE • TO-DAY
Ah, yet, ere I descend to the grave
May I a small house and large garden have !
And a few friends, and many books, both true,
Both wise, and both delightful too!
And since Love ne'er will from me flee,
A mistress moderately fair,
And good as guardian angels are,
Only belov'd, and loving me !
Oh, fountains, when in you shall I
Myself, eased of unpeaceful thoughts, espy?
Oh fields! Oh woods! when, when shall I be
made
The happy tenant of your shade?
Here's the spring-head of Pleasure's flood;
Where all the riches lie, that she
Has coin'd and stamp'd for good.
Pride and ambition here
Only in far-fetch'd metaphors appear;
Here nought but winds can hurtful murmurs
scatter,
And nought but Echo flatter.
The Gods, when they descended, hither
[45]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
From heaven did always choose their way;
And therefore we may boldly say,
That 'tis the way too thither.
How happy here should I,
And one dear She live, and embracing die!
She who is all the world, and can exclude
In deserts solitude.
I should have then this only fear,
Lest men, when they my pleasures see,
Should hither throng to live like me,
And so make a city here.
A. COWLEY.
The bee through flowery gardens goes
Buzzing to drink the morning's tears,
And from the early lily bears
A kiss commended to the rose,
And like a wary messenger,
Whispers some amorous story to his ear.
(XVIIth Century),
Have ye seen the morning sky,
When the dawn prevails on high,
[46]
TIME • PASSES • FRIENDSHIP • STAYS
When, anon, some purple ray
Gives a sample of the day,
When, anon, the lark, on wing,
Strives to soar, and strains to sing?
Have ye seen the ethereal blue
Gently shedding silvery dew,
Spangling o'er the silent green,
While the nightingale, unseen,
To the moon and stars, full bright,
Lonesome chants the hymn of night?
Have ye seen the broider'd May
All her scented bloom display,
Breezes opening, every hour,
This, and that, expecting flower,
While the mingling birds prolong,
From each bush the vernal song?
Have ye seen the damask rose
Her unsully'd blush disclose,
Or the lily's dewy bell,
In her glossy white, excell,
Or a garden vary'd o'er
With a thousand glories more?
[47]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
By the beauties these display,
Morning, evening, night, or day;
By the pleasures these excite,
Endless sources of delight!
Judge, by them, the joys I find.
A. PHILIPS.
The Happy Swain.
The midges dance aboon the burn;
The dews begin to fa';
The pairtricks down the rushy holm
Set up their e'ening ca'.
Now loud and clear the blackbird's song
Rings through the briery shaw,
While flitting gay, the swallows play
Around the castle wa'.
Beneath the golden gloaming sky
The mavis mends her lay;
The redbreast pours his sweetest strains
To charm the ling'ring day;
[48]
THY • DAYS • BE • BRIGHT
While weary yeldrins seem to wail
Their little nestlings torn,
The merry wren, frae den to den,
Goes j inkling through the thorn.
The roses fauld their silken leaves,
The foxglove shuts its bell;
The honeysuckle and the birk
Spread fragrance through the dell.
Let others crowd the giddy court
Of mirth and revelry
The simple joys that Nature yields
Are dearer far to me.
R. TANNAHILL.
The Midges Dance Aboon the Burn.
The groves of Blarney
They look so charming,
Down by the purling
Of sweet silent streams,
Being banked with posies,
That spontaneous grows there,
Planted in order
By the sweet rock close.
[49l
U IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
'Tis there's the daisy
And the sweet carnation,
The blooming pink,
And the rose so fair;
The daffodowndilly —
Likewise the lily,
All flowers that scent
The sweet fragrant air.
There's gravel walks there,
For speculation
And conversation
In sweet solitude.
'Tis there the lover
May hear the dove, or
The gentle plover
In the afternoon ;
And if a lady
Would be so engaging
As to walk alone in
Those shady bowers,
'Tis there the courtier
He may transport her
Into some fort, or
All under ground.
• • • • »
[50]
A • LA • BONNE • HEURE
There's statues gracing
This noble place in —
All heathen gods
And nymphs so fair;
Bold Neptune, Plutarch,
And Nicodemus,
All standing naked.
In the open air!
So now to finish
This brave narration,
Which my poor geni'
Could not entwine ;
But were I Homer,
Or Nebuchadnezzar,
'Tis in every feature
I would make it shine.
R. A. MlLLIKIN.
The Groves of Blarney.
With deep devotion, Nature, did I feel,
In that enormous City's turbulent world
Of men and things, what benefit I owed
To thee, and those domains of rural peace,
Where to the sense of beauty first my heart
[51]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Was opened; tract more exquisitely fair
Than that famed paradise of ten thousand trees,
Or Gehol's matchless gardens, for delight
Of the Tartarian dynasty compared
(Beyond that mighty wall, not fabulous,
China's stupendous mound) by patient toil
Of myriads and boon nature's lavish help;
There, in a clime from widest empire chosen,
Fulfilling (could enchantment have done more?)
A sumptuous dream of flowery lawns, with domes
Of pleasure sprinkled over, shady dells
For eastern monasteries, sunny mounts
With temples erected, bridges, gondolas,
Rocks, dens, and groves of foliage taught to melt
Into each other their obsequious hues,
Vanished and vanishing in subtle chase,
Too fine to be pursued ; or standing forth
In no discordant opposition, strong
And gorgeous as the colours side by side
Bedded among rich plumes of tropic birds;
And mountains over all, embracing all;
And all the landscape, endlessly enriched
With waters running, falling, or asleep.
WILLIAM WADSWORTH.
The Prelude, Book VIII, Retrospect.
[52]
tf AGE • QUOD • AGIS
In a Persian Garden
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
O, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come ;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
Look to the blowing Rose about us — " Lo,
Laughing," she says, " into the world I blow,
At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."
And those who husbanded the golden grain
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain
Alike of no such aureate Earth are turned
As, buried once, men want dug up again.
*****
Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his destined Hour, and went his way.
[53]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank
deep:
And Bahram, that great Hunter — the wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his sleep.
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The rose as when some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely head.
And this reviving Herb whose tender green
Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean —
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely lip it springs unseen!
EDWARD FITZ GERALD.
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
A Song of Phaeacia
The Languid sunset, mother of roses,
Lingers, a light on the magic seas,
The wide fire flames, as a flower encloses,
Heavy with odour, and loose to the breeze.
[54]
TO-DAY • is • YESTERDAYS • PUPIL
The red rose clouds, without law or leader,
Gather and float in the airy plain;
The nightingale sings to the dewy cedar,
The cedar scatters his scent to the main.
The strange flowers' perfume turns to singing,
Heard afar over moonlit seas;
The Siren's song, grown faint in winging,
Falls in scent on the cedar trees.
As waifs blown out of the sunset, flying,
Purple, and rosy, and grey, the birds
Brighten the air with their wings; their crying
Wakens a moment the weary herds.
Butterflies flit from the fairy garden,
Living blossoms of flying flowers;
Never the nights with winter harden,
Nor moons wax keen in this land of ours.
Great fruits, fragrant, green and golden,
Gleam in the green, and droop and fall;
Blossom, and bud, and flowers unfolden,
Swing, and cling to the garden wall.
[55]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Deep in the woods as twilight darkens,
Glades are red with the scented fire;
Far in the dells the white maid hearkens,
Song and sigh of the heart's desire.
Ah, and as moonlight fades in morning,
Maiden's song in the matin grey,
Faint as the first bird's note, a warning,
Wakes and wails to the new-born day.
The waking, song and the dying measure
Meet, and the waxing and waning light
Meet, and faint with the hours of pleasure,
The rose of the sea and sky is white.
ANDREW LANG.
Ballads and Lyrics of Old France.
For lo, — a garden-place I found,
Well filled of leaves, and stilled of sound,
Well flowered, with red fruit marvellous;
And 'twixt the shining trunks would flit
Tall knights and silken maids, or sit
With faces bent and amorous; —
[56]
THINK • AND • THANK
There, in the heart thereof, and crowned
With woodbine and amaracus,
My Love, I found.
* * * * *
" This is well done," — she said, — " in thee,
O Love, that thou art come to me,
To this green garden glorious;
Now truly shall our life be sped
In joyance and all goodlihead,
For here all things are fair to us,
And none with burden is oppressed,
And none is poor or piteous, —
For here is Rest:
" No formless Future blurs the sky ;
Men mourn not here, with dull dead eye,
By shrouded shapes of Yesterday;
Betwixt the Coming and the Past.
The flawless life hangs fixen fast
In one unwearying To-Day,
That darkens not; for Sin is striven,
Death from the doors is thrust away,
And here is Heaven."
AUSTIN DOBSON.
A Song of Angiola in Heaven.
[57]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
A Garden in Spring
How the lilacs, the lilacs are glowing and
blowing !
And white through the delicate verdure of
May
The blossoming boughs of the hawthorn are
showing,
Like beautiful brides in their bridal array;
With cobwebs for laces, and dewdrops for
pearls,
Fine as a queen's dowry for workaday girls.
And the lilacs, the lilacs are blowing and
glowing !
They pluck them by handfulls and pile in a
mass
And the sap of the Springtide is rising and
flowing
Through the veins of the greenwood, the
blades of the grass:
Up, up, to the last leaf a dance on the tree,
It leaps like a fountain abundant and free.
[58]
NONEO • DUM • MOVED
The blackbirds are building their nests in the
bushes,
And whistle at work, as the work people do ;
The trees swing their censors, the wind comes in
gushes
Of delicate scent mixed of honey and dew.
Now loud and now low through the gar-
rulous trees
A burst of gay music is blown with the
breeze.
Oh, the lilacs, the lilacs are glowing and blowing !
They pluck them by bushels as blithely they go
Through the green, scented dusk where the haw-
thorn is showing
A luminous whiteness of blossoming snow.
And the Sun ere he goes gives the Moon
half his light,
As a Lamp to lead Love on the bridal
Night. MATHILDE BLIND.
A Bridal in the Bois de Boulogne.
The wassailous heart of the Year is thine!
His Bacchic ringers disentwine
His coronal
At thy festival;
[59]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
His revelling fingers disentwine
Leaf, flower, and all,
And let them fall
Blossom and all in thy wavering wine.
The Summer looks out from her brazen tower,
Through the flashing bars of July,
Waiting thy ripened golden shower;
Whereof there cometh, with sandals fleet,
The North-west flying viewlessly,
With a sword to sheer, and untameable feet,
And the Gorgon-head of the Winter shown
To stiffen the gazing earth as stone.
* # * * *
Still, mighty Season, do I see't,
Thy sway is still majestical
Thou hold'st of God by title sure,
Thine indefeasible investiture,
And that right round thy locks are native to;
The heavens upon thy brow imperial,
This huge terrene thy ball,
And o'er thy shoulders thrown wide air's de-
pending pall
What if thine earth be blear and bleak of hue?
Still, still the skies are sweet!
Still, Season, still thou hast thy triumphs
there !
[60]
tl NE • QUID • PEREAT U
How have I, unaware,
Forgetful of my strain inaugural,
Cleft the great rondure of thy reign complete,
Yielding the half, who hast indeed the all?
I will not think thy sovereignty begun
But with the shepherd Sun
That washes in the sea the stars' gold fleeces;
Or that with Day it ceases,
Who sets his burning lips to the salt brine,
And purples it to wine ;
While I behold how ermined Artemis
Ordained weed must wear,
And toil thy business;
WTio witness am of her,
Her too in autumn turned a vintager;
And, laden with its lamped clusters bright,
The fiery-fruited vineyard of this night.
FRANCIS THOMPSON.
A Corymbus for Autumn.
I have a secret garden
Where sacred lilies lift
White faces kind with pardon
To hear my shrift.
[61]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
And all blood-riot falters
Before those faces there;
Bowed down at quiet altars,
Mine hours are monks at prayer.
Oh through my spirit kneeling,
The silence thrills and sings
The cosmic brother feeling
Of growing, hopeful things;
Old soothing Earth a mother,
A sire the stooping Blue;
The Sun a mighty Brother —
And God is in the dew.
Oh, Garden hushed and splendid
With lily, star and tree!
There all wild dreams are ended —
Oh, come with me!
JOHN G. NEIHARDT.
The Fugitive Glory.
[62]
The Garden of Love
HOURS • FLY,
FLOWERS • DIE,
NEW • DAYS,
NEW • WAYS,
PASS • BY ;
LOVE « STAYS.
SO • FLIES • LIFE • AWAY
foici Notre Heure
She led me, hand in hand, and we went into her
garden to converse together.
There she made me taste of excellent honey.
The rushes of the garden were verdant, and all
its bushes flourishing.
There were currant trees and cherries redder
than rubies.
The ripe peaches (the Persian fruit) of the gar-
den resembled bronze, and the groves had
the lustre of the stone nashem (green
felspar).
The menni unshelled like cocoanuts they brought
us; its shade was fresh and airy, and soft
for the repose of love.
" Come to me," she called unto me, " and enjoy
thyself a day . . . the garden is to-day in
its glory: there is a terrace and a parlour."
(An Egyptian Poem. Written about 1 300 B.C. Taken from " The
Tale of the Garden of Flowers." Translated by M. Francois Chabas.)
(Records of the Poret, Egyptian Texts).
[65]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
A Grecian Garden
(Translated by Andrew Lang.)
Then he bent his way to the left, and took the
road to Pyxa, while I and Eucritus, with beau-
tiful Amyntas, turned to the farm of Phrasi-
demus. There we reclined on deep beds of
fragrant lentisk, lowly strewn, and rejoicing we
lay in new stript leaves of the vine. And high
above our heads waved many a poplar, many an
elm tree, while close at hand the sacred water
from the nymphs' own cave welled forth with
murmurs musical. On shadowy boughs the
burnt cicadas kept their chattering toil, far off
the little owl cried in the thick thorn brake, the
larks and finches were singing, the ring-dove
moaned, the yellow bees were flitting about the
springs. All breathed the scent of the opulent
summer, of the season of fruits; pears at our
feet and apples by our sides were rolling plenti-
ful, the tender branches, with wild plums laden,
were earthward bowed.
Theocritus, Idyl XII.
[66]
U" ICH • DIEN tT
Amonges othere of his honeste thynges
He made a gardyn walled al with stoon.
So fair a gardyn woot I nowker noon,
For out of doute, I verraily suppose
That he wroot the romance of the Rose
Ne koude of it the beautee wel devyse
Ne Priapus me myghte nat suffise,
Though he be god of gardyns, for to telle
The beautee of the gardyn, and the welle,
That stood under a laurer, alwey grene.
Ful of te tyme he Pluto, and his queene
Proserpina, and al hire fairye,
Disporten hem and maken melodye
About that welle, and dannced as men tolde.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
Canterbury Tales, The Merchant's Tale.
The Garden of Proserpina
The Gardin of Proserpina this hight;
And in the midst thereof a silver seat,
With a thick Arber goodly over-dight,
In which she often used from open heat
Her selfe to shroud, and pleasures to entreat;
[67]
U IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS T$
Next thereunto did grow a goodly tree,
With branches broad dispredd and body great,
Clothed with leaves, that none like wood mote
see,
And loaden all with fruit as thick as it might bee.
Their fruit were golden apples glistning bright,
That goodly was their glory to behold:
On earth like never grew, ne living wight
Like ever saw, but they from hence were sold;
For those which Hercules, with conquest bold
Got from great Atlas daughters, hence began,
And planted there did bring forth fruit of gold;
And those with which th' Eubcean young man
wan
Swift Atalanta, when through craft he her out
ran.
Here also sprong that goodly golden fruit,
With which Acontius got his lover trew,
Whom he had long time sought with fruitlesse
suit:
Here eke the famous golden Apple grew,
The which emongst the gods false Ate threw;
[68]
MUNDI • OCULOS
For which th' Idaean Ladies disagreed,
Till partial Paris dempt it Venus dew,
And had of her fayre Helen for his meed,
That many noble Greekes and Trojans made to
bleed. „ r
EDMUND SPENSER.
The Faerie Queene, Bk. II, Canto XII.
The Garden of Adonis
She brought her to her joyous Paradize,
Wher most she wonnes when she on earth does
dwell ;
So faire a place as Nature can devize:
Whether in Paphos, or Cytheron hill,
Or it in Gnidus bee, I wote not well;
But well I wote by triall, that this same
All other pleasaunt places doth excell,
And called is by her lost lover's name,
The Gardin of Adonis, far renowned by fame.
In that same Gardin all the goodly flowres, .
Wherewith dame Nature doth her beautify,
And decks the girlonds of her Paramoures,
Are fetcht: there is the first seminary
[69]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Of all things that are borne to live and dye,
According to their kynds. Long Xvorke it were
Here to account the endless progeny
Of all the weeds that bud and blossome there;
But so much as doth need must needs be counted
here.
It sited was in fruitfull soyle of old,
And girt in with two walls on either side;
The one of yron, the other of bright gold,
That none might thorough breake, nor overstride.
And double gates it had which opened wide,
By which both in and out men moten pas:
Th' one faire and fresh, the other old and dride,
Old Genius the porter of them was,
Old Genius, the which a double nature has.
He letteth in, he letteth out to wend
All that to come into the world desire:
A thousand thousand naked babes attend
About him day and night, which doe require
That he with fleshly weeds would them attire:
Such as him list, such as eternall fate
Ordained hath, he clothes with sinfull mire,
And sendeth forth to live in mortall state,
Till they agayn returne backe by the hinder gate.
[70]
NOW • OR • WHEN
After that they againe returned beene,
They in that Gardin planted bee agayne,
And grow afresh, as they had never scene
Fleshly corruption, nor mortall payne,
Some thousand yeares so doen they there remayne,
And then of him are clad with other hew,
Or sent into the chaungefull world agayne,
Till thither they retourne where first they grew :
So, like a wheele, arownd they ronne from old
to new.
Ne needs there Gardiner to sett or sow,
To plant or prune; for of their owne accord
All things, as they created were, doe grow,
And yet remember well the mighty word
Which first was spoken by th' Almighty Lord,
That bad them to increase and multiply:
Ne doe they need with water of the ford,
Or of the clouds, to moysten their roots dry;
For in themselves eternall moisture they imply.
Infinite shapes of creatures there are bred,
And uncouth formes, which none yet ever knew:
And every sort is in a sondry bed
Sett by itselfe, and ranckt in comely rew;
Some fitt for reasonable sowles t' indew,
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Some made for beasts, some made for birds to
weare ;
And all the fruitfull spawne of fishes hew
In endlesse rancks along enraunged were,
That seemd the Ocean could not containe them
there.
Daily they grow, and daily forth are sent
Into the world, it to replenish more;
Yet is the stocke not lessened nor spent,
But still remaines in everlasting store,
As it at first created was of yore:
For in the wide wombe of the world there lyes,
In hatefull darknes and in deepe horrore,
An huge eternall chaos, which supplyes
The substaunces of nature's fruitfull progenyes.
All things from thence doe their first being fetch,
And borrow matter whereof they are made;
Which, whenas forme and feature it does ketch,
Becomes a body, and doth then invade
The state of life out of the griesly shade.
That substance is eterne, and bideth so ;
Ne when the life decayes and forme does fade,
Doth it consume and into nothing goe,
But chaunged is, and often altred to and froe.
[72]
LOVE • NEVER • FAILETH
The substance is not chaunged nor altered,
But th' only forme and outward fashion;
For every substance is conditioned
To chaunge her hew, and sondry formes to don,
Meet for her temper and complexion:
For formes are variable and decay
By course of kinde and by occasion ;
And that faire flowre of beautie fades away,
As doth the lily fresh before the sunny ray.
Great enimy to it, and to all the rest
That in the Gardin of Adonis springs,
Is wicked Tyme: who with his scythe addrest
Does mow the flowring herbes and goodly things,
And all their glory to the ground downe flings,
Where they do wither, and are fowly mard :
He flyes about, and with his flaggy winges
Beates downe both leaves and buds without
regard,
Ne ever pitty may relent his malice hard.
Yet pitty often did the gods relent,
To see so faire thinges mard and spoiled quight;
And their great mother Venus did lament
The losse of her deare brood, her deare delight:
Her hart was pierst with pitty at the sight,
[73]
tT IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS U
When walking through the Gardin them she
saw,
Yet no'te she find redresse for such despight:
For all that lives is subject to that law;
All things decay in time, and to their end doe
draw.
But were it not that Time their troubler Is,
All that in this delightfull Gardin growes
Should happy bee, and have immortall blis:
For here all plenty and all pleasure flowes;
And sweete love gentle fitts emongst them
throwes,
Without fel rancor or fond gealosy.
Franckly each Paramor his leman knpwes,
Each bird his mate: ne any does envy
Their goodly meriment and gay felicity.
There is continuall Spring, and harvest there
Continuall, both meeting at one tyme;
For both the boughes doe laughing blossoms
beare,
And with fresh colours decke the wanton Pryme,
And eke attonce the heavy trees they clyme,
Which seeme to labour under their fruites lode:
[74]
THROUGH • SHADOW • LOVE • COMES
The whiles the joyous bi'rdes make their pastyme
Emongst the shady leaves, their sweet abode,
And their trew loves without suspicion tell
abrode.
EDMUND SPENSER.
The Faerie Queene, Book III, Canto VI.
Cherry Ripe
There is a garden in her face
Where roses and white lilies blow;
A heavenly paradise is that place
Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow.
There cherries grow that none may buy,
Till " Cherry-ripe " themselves do cry.
Those cherries fairly do enclose
Of orient pearl a double row,
Which when her lovely laughter shows,
They look like rose-buds filled with snow;
Yet them nor peer nor prince may buy,
Till " Cherry-ripe " themselves do cry.
[75]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Her eyes like angels watch them still;
Her brows like bended bows do stand,
Threatening with piercing frowns to kill
All that attempt with eye or hand
Those sacred cherries to come nigh
Till " Cherry-ripe " themselves do cry.
THOMAS CAMPION.
Love in the Garden
See'st not, my love, with what a grace
The Spring resembles thy sweet face?
Here let us sit, and in these bowers
Receive the odours of the flowers,
For Flora, by thy beauty woo'd conspires thy
good.
See how she sends her fragrant sweet,
And doth this homage to thy feet,
Bending so low her stooping head
To kiss the ground where thou dost tread,
And all her flowers proudly meet, to kiss thy feet.
[76]
PRAISE • A • FAIR • DAY • AT • NIGHT
Then let us walk, my dearest love,
And on this carpet strictly prove
Each other's vow; from thy request
No other love invades my breast.
For how can I contemn that fire which Gods
admire?
To crop that rose why dost thou seek,
When there's a purer in thy cheek?
Like coral held in thy fair hands,
Or blood and milk that mingled stands:
To whom the Powers and grace have given, a
type of Heaven.
Yon lily stooping t'wards this place,
Is a pale shadow for thy face,
Under which veil doth seem to rush
Modest Endymion's ruddy blush.
A blush, indeed, more pure and fair than lilies
are.
Glance on those flowers thy radiant eyes,
Through which clear beams they'll sympathize
Reflective love, to make them far
More glorious than th' Hesperian star,
For every swain amazed lies, and gazing dies.
[771
U IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS U
See how these silly flowers twine,
With sweet embracings, and combine,
Striving with curious looms to set
Their pale and red into a net,
To show how pure desire doth rest for ever
blest.
Why wilt thou then unconstant be?
T' infringe the laws of amity,
And so much disrespect my heart
To derogate from what thou art?
When in harmonious love there is Elysian bliss.
W. BOSWORTH.
Spring in a Garden
Though you be absent here, I needs must say
The trees as beauteous are, and flowers as 'gay,
As ever they were wont to be ;
Nay the birds' rural music too
Is as melodious and free,
As if they sung to pleasure you :
I saw a rose-bud ope this morn ; I'll swear
The blushing morning open'd not more fair.
[78]
IT • IS • LATER • THAN • YOU • THINK
How could it be so fair, and you away?
How could the trees be beauteous, flowers so gay?
Could they remember but last year,
How you did them, they you delight,
The sprouting leaves which saw you here,
And called their fellows to the sight,
Would, looking round for the same sight in vain,
Creep back into their silent barks again.
Where'er you walk'd trees were as reverend
made,
As when of old gods dwelt in every shade.
Is't possible they should not know,
What loss of honour they sustain,
That thus they smile and flourish now,
And still their former pride retain?
Dull creatures! 'tis not without cause that she,
Who fled the god of wit, was made a tree.
In ancient times sure they much wiser were,
When they rejoic'd the Thracian verse to hear;
In vain did nature bid them stay,
When Orpheus had his song begun,
They call'd their wondering roots away,
And bade them silent to him run.
[79]
tT IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
How would those learned trees have followed
you?
You would have drawn them, and their poet too.
But who can blame them now? for, since you're
gone,
They're here the only fair, and shine alone.
You did their natural rights invade;
Where ever you did walk or sit,
The thickest boughs could make no shade,
Although the Sun had granted it:
The fairest flowers could please no more, near
you,
Than painted flowers, set next to them, could do.
When e'er then you come hither, that shall be
The time, which this to others is, to me.
The little joys which here are now,
The name of punishments do bear;
When by their sight they let us know
How we depriv'd of greater are.
'Tis you the best of seasons with you bring ;
This is for beasts, and that for men the Spring.
A. COWLEY.
[80]
TU LOVE • HAS • EYES
His spacious garden made to yield to none,
Was compass'd round with walls of solid stone;
Priapus could not half describe the grace
(Tho' God of gardens) of this charming place:
A place to fire the rambling wits of France
In long descriptions, and exceed Romance ;
Enough to shame the gentlest bard that sings
Of painted meadows, and of purling springs,
Full in the centre of the flow'ry ground,
A crystal fountain spread its streams around,
The fruitful banks with verdant laurels crown'd :
About this spring (if ancient fame say true)
The dapper Elves their moonlight sports pursue:
Their pigmy king, and little fairy queen,
In circling dances gamboll'd on the green,
While tuneful sprites a merry concert made,
And airy music warbled thro' the glade.
ALEXANDER POPE.
January and May.
Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers
Plucked in the garden, all the summer through
And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
In this close room, nor missed the sun and
showers,
[81]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
So, in the like name of that love of ours,
Take back these thoughts which here unfolded
too,
And which on warm and cold days I withdrew
From my heart's ground. Indeed, those beds
and bowers
Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue,
And wait thy weeding; yet here's eglantine,
Here's ivy! — take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall
not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
And tell thy soul their roots are left in mine.
E. B. BROWNING.
"Sonnets from the Portuguese"
The Flower's Name
Here's the garden she walked across,
Arm in arm, such a short while since:
Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss
Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!
[82]
EITHER • LEARN • OR • GO
She must have reached this shrub ere she turned,
As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot
spurned,
To feed and forget it the leaves among.
II
Down this side of the gravel walk
She went while her robe's edge brushed the
box:
And here she paused in her gracious talk
To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.
Roses, ranged in valiant row,
I will never think that she passed you by!
She loves you noble roses, I know ;
But, yonder, see, where the rock-plants lie!
Ill
This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,
Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim;
Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip,
Its soft meandering Spanish name:
[83]
tl IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
What a name! Was it love or praise?
Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish, one of these days,
Only for that low sweet name's sake.
IV
Roses, if I live and do well,
I may bring her, one of these days,
To fix you fast with as fine a spell,
Fit you each with his Spanish phrase;
But do not detain me now ; for she lingers
There, like sunshine over the ground,
And ever I see her soft white fingers
Searching after the bud she found.
Flower, you Spaniard, look that you grow not,
Stay as you are and be loved for ever!
Bud, if I kiss you 'tis that you blow not:
Mind, the sweet pink mouth opens never!
For while it pouts, her fingers wrestle,
Twinkling the audacious leaves between,
Till round they turn and down they nestle —
Is not the dear mark still to be seen?
[84]
NEVER- TO • BE -RECALLED
VI
Where I find her not, beauties vanish;
Whither I follow her, beauties flee;
Is there no method to tell her in Spanish
June's twice June since she breathed it with
me?
Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,
Treasure my lady's lightest footfall!
— Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces —
Roses, you are not so fair after all!
ROBERT BROWNING.
Garden Fancies.
Come into the Garden, Maud!
Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the rose is blown.
[85]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
For a breeze of morning moves
And the planet of love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
On a bed of a daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.
All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirred
To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.
I said to the lily, " There is but one
With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her alone?
She is weary of dance and play."
Now half to the setting moon are gone,
And half to the rising day;
Low on the sand and loud on the stone
The last wheel echoes away.
I said to the rose, " The brief night goes
In babble and revel and wine,
[86]
I • HEAR • AND • I • WAIT
O young lord-lover, what sighs are those,
For one that will never be thine?
But mine, but mine," so I swore to the rose,
" For ever and ever, mine."
And the Soul of the rose went into my blood,
As the music clash'd in the hall ;
And long by the garden lake I stood,
For I heard your rivulet fall
From the lake to the meadow and on to the
wood,
Our wood, that is dearer than all;
From the meadow your walks have left so sweet
That whenever a March-wind sighs
He sets the jewel-print of your feet
In violets blue as your eyes,
To the woody hollows in which we meet
And the valleys of Paradise.
The slender acacia would not shake
One long milk-bloom on the tree;
The white lake-blossom fell into the lake
As the pimpernel dozed on the lea;
[87]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
But the rose was awake all night for your sake,
Knowing your promise to me ;
The lillies and roses were all awake,
They sigh'd for the dawn and thee.
Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,
Come hither, the dances are done,
In glare of satin and glimmer of pearls,
Queen lily and rose in one ;
Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls,
To the flowers, and be their sun.
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate,
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, " She is near, she is near " ;
And the white rose weeps, " She is late ";
The larkspur listens, " I hear, I hear " ;
And the lily whispers, " I wait."
She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
[88]
MY • REDEEMER • LIVETH
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead ;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom is purple and red.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
Maud.
I know a little garden-close
Set thick with lily and red rose,
Where I would wander if I might.
From dewy dawn to dewy night,
And have one with me wandering.
And though within it no birds sing,
And though no pillar'd house is there,
And though the apple boughs are bare
Of fruit and blossom, would to God,
Her feet upon the green grass trod,
And I beheld them as before!
WILLIAM MORRIS.
The Nymph's Song to Hylas.
[89]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
In a Bower
A path led hither from the house
Where I have left your doubt and pain,
0 fettered days of all my past;
1 lingered long, but came at last;
One lifting up of fragrant boughs,
Then love was here and broke my chain
With eager hands: the die is cast,
No path leads back again.
Henceforth, cold tyrant of my heart,
You rule no longer pulse or breath ;
Love, with rich words and kisses hot,
Has told me truth in this charmed spot;
And, though your hand this hour should part
The leaves, I have no thought, but saith
My life is Love's : I fear you not,
Now you are only Death.
And Death creeps up the garden walk;
But Love hastes, winning more and more:
My hands, my mouth, are his, my hair,
My breasts, as all my first thoughts were;
[90]
LOVE • NEVER • FAILETH
Across the moonlit sward Death stalks;
But Love upon this flower-strewn floor
Hath made me wholly his ; ah, then !
Death stands outside the door.
ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY.
In Eastern lands they talk in flowers,
And they tell in a garland their loves and
cares ;
Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers
On its leaves a mystic language bears.
The rose is a sign of joy and love,
Young, blushing love in its earliest dawn;
And the mildness that suits the gentle dove
From the myrtle's snowy flower is drawn.
Innocence shines in the lily's bell
Pure as the heart in its native heaven;
Fame's bright star and glory's swell
In the glossy leaf of the bay is given.
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
The silent, soft, and humble heart
In the violets hidden sweetness breathes;
And the tender soul that cannot part
A twine of evergreen fondly wreathes.
The cypress, that daily shades the grave,
In sorrow that mournes her bitter lot;
And faith, that a thousand ills can brave,
Speaks in thy blue leaves, forget-me-not.
Then gather a wreath from the garden flowers,
And tell the wish of thy heart in flowers.
PERCIVAL.
(Quoted from Helen Milman's " My Kalendar of Country Delights.")
A Garden Lyric
We have loiter'd and laugh'd in the flowery croft,
We have met under wintry skies;
Her voice is the dearest voice, and soft
Is the light in her gentle eyes;
[92]
LOVE • IS • KIND ET
It is sweet in the silent woods, among
Gay crowds, or in any place
To hear voice, to gaze on her young
Confiding face.
For ever may roses divinely blow,
And wine-dark pansies charm
By the prim box path where I felt the glow
Of her dimpled, trusting arm,
And the sweep of her silk as she turn'd and
smiled
A smile as pure as her pearls;
The breeze was in love with the darling Child,
As it moved her curls.
She show'd me her ferns and woodbine-sprays,
Foxglove and jasmine stars,
A mist of blue in the beds, a blaze
Of red in the celadon jars:
And velvety bees in convolvulus bells,
And roses of bountiful June —
Oh, who would think their summer spells
Could die so soon!
For a glad song came from the milking shed,
On a wind of the summer south,
[93]
tT IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS U
And the green was golden above her head,
And a sunbeam kiss'd her mouth;
Sweet were the lips where that sunbeam dwelt;
And the wings of Time were fleet
As I gazed; and neither spoke, for we felt
Life was so sweet!
And the odorous limes were dim above
As we leant on a drooping bough;
And the darkling air was a breath of love,
And a witching thrush sang " Now! "
For the sun dropt low, and the twilight grew
As we listen'd, and sigh'd, and leant;
That day was the sweetest day — and we knew
What the sweetness meant.
FREDERICK LOCKER.
London Lyrics.
Lovers in a Garden
A maiden, in a garden, dreaming
Of fairy-prince and halcyon days;
Her head, with sunny tresses gleaming,
Bow'd down beneath dim trellis'd ways;
[94]
A • GARDEN • IS • LOVE S • HEART
A row of sunflowers by a paling,
A wicket left upon the latch,
A summer-house with woodbine trailing,
And ivy creeping o'er the thatch.
A footfall on the garden gravel,
A quick'ning heart, a whisper'd word;
A youth, burnt brown with foreign travel,
Come back to claim a hope deferred.
O happy, happy time of Love's beginning,
Ere ever we can guess that storms are near,
Sunlight dancing, buds unfolding, thrushes
singing,
Golden Summer of the soul and of the year!
VIOLET FANE.
One Flower
When autumn suns are soft, and sea winds moan,
And golden fruits make sweet the golden air,
In gardens where the apple-blossoms were,
In these old springs before I walked alone;
I pass among the pathways overgrown,
[95]
tT IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS U
Of all the former flowers that kissed your feet
Remains a poppy, pallid from the heat,
A wild poppy that the wild winds have sown.
Alas! the rose forgets your hands of rose;
The lilies slumber in the lily bed;
'Tis only poppies in the dreamy close,
The changeless, windless garden of the dead,
You tend, with buds soft as your kiss that lies
In ever happy dreams, upon mine eyes.
ANDREW LANG.
Ballads and Lyrics of Old France.
My Heart Shall be Thy Garden
My heart shall be thy garden. Come, my own,
Into thy garden; thine be happy hours
Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers,
From root to crowning petal, thine alone.
Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown
Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers.
But ah, the birds, the birds! Who shall build
bowers
To keep these thine? O friend, the birds have
flown.
[96]
WITHOUT • SUN • I • KEEP • SILENCE
For as these come and go, and quit our pine
To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers,
Sing one song only from our alder-trees.
My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes
hold mine,
Flit to the silent world and other summers,
With wings that dip beyond the silver seas.
ALICE MEYNELL.
The Garden of Shadow
" Love heeds no more the sighing of the wind
Against the perfect flowers: thy garden's close
Is grown a wilderness, where none shall find
One strayed, last petal of one last year's rose.
" O bright, bright hair ! O mouth like a ripe
fruit !
Can famine be so nigh to harvesting?
Love, that was songful, with a broken lute
In grass of graveyards goeth murmuring.
[97]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
" Let the wind blow against the perfect flowers,
And all thy garden change and glow with spring:
Love is grown blind with no more count of hours
Nor part in seed-time nor in harvesting."
ERNEST DOWSON.
In your mother's apple-orchard,
Just a year ago, last spring:
Do you remember, Yvonne!
The dear trees lavishing
Rain of their starry blossoms
To make you a coronet?
Do you remember, Yvonne?
As I remember yet.
In your mother's apple-orchard,
When the world was left behind:
You were so shy, so shy, Yvonne!
But your eyes were calm and kind.
We spoke of the apple harvest,
When the cider press is set,
And such-like trifles, Yvonne!
That doubtless you forget.
[98]
TIME • WAS • MADE • FOR • SLAVES
In the still soft Breton twilight,
We were silent; words were few,
Till your mother came out chiding,
For the grass was bright with dew
But I know your heart was beating,
Like a fluttered, frightened dove.
Do you ever remember, Yvonne?
That first faint flush of love?
In the fulness of midsummer,
When the apple-bloom was shed,
Oh, brave was your surrender,
Though shy the words you said.
I am glad, so glad, Yvonne!
To have led you home at last;
Do you ever remember, Yvonne!
How swiftly the days passed?
In your mother's apple-orchard
It is grown too dark to stray,
There is none to chide you, Yvonne!
You are over far away.
There is dew on your grave-grass, Yvonne!
But your feet it shall not wet:
[99]
HJ IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS U
No, you never remember, Yvonne !
And I shall soon forget.
ERNEST DOWSON.
Yvonne of Britanny.
Dost thou remember how one morn of Spring
A bunch of yellow roses sweet and rare,
Gathered while yet the garden walks were
bare,
Into thy presence ... I did bring?. . .
Whispering, " Whatsoever may befall
Within love's garden-lands of sun and showers,
This token shall remain with thee through all
The silence of thy sad and lonely hours!
WILLIAM AKERMAN.
The Parting Hour
Not yet, dear love, not yet : the sun is high ;
You said last night, " At sunset I will go."
Come to the garden, where when blossoms die
No word is spoken ; it is better so :
Ah! bitter word "Farewell."
[100]
CHERISH • LOVES • TIME
Hark! how the birds sing sunny songs of spring!
Soon they will build, and work will silence
them;
So we grow less light-hearted as years bring
Life's grave responsibilities — and then
The bitter word " Farewell."
The violets fret to fragrance 'neath your feet,
Heaven's gold sunlight dreams aslant your
hair:
No flower for me ! your mouth is far more sweet.
O, let my lips forget, while lingering there,
Love's bitter word " Farewell."
Sunset already! have we sat so long?
The parting hour, and so much left unsaid!
The garden has grown silent — void of song,
Our sorrow shakes us with a sudden dread!
Ah ! bitter word " Farewell."
OLIVE CUSTANCE.
[101]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
The Orange Garden
(Translation from the Moorish by Walter Harris of Tangier)
I
I cannot find this Orange Garden fair:
The dim dishevelled grass is wet and chill.
Desolate, croaking frogs distress the air,
But birds, if ever birds come here, are still.
Even the oranges have lost their light
And droop forlorn beneath the sombre green.
A water-wheel creaks somewhere out of sight,
Grey mist and shadow veil the lonely scene.
And when I think I hear your coming feet
Rustle across the grass and violet leaves,
'Tis but the gardener, who fears to meet,
Among the gloom some fruit-attracted thieves.
II
Fair, ah, fair, is the Sunny Orange Garden,
Secret and shady, scented and green.
Gold, red gold, are the oranges in clusters,
Fragrant and bright in their ripened sheen.
[102]
LOVE • ME • LITTLE • LOVE • ME • LONG
Even the croaking of the frogs is music,
Even the creak of the wheel is song,
Straight to my naked heart the wild birds' warble
Strikes in cadence, tremulously strong.
Now the old gardener passes discreetly,
Never upraising his guarded eyes,
For here, in the violets, at rest, beside me,
Sweet and consenting, my Loved One lies!
LAURENCE HOPE.
Stars of the Desert.
[103]
SHINING • SPOT • FOR - EVER • SHINING
BRIGHTEST • HOURS- HAVE • NO • ABIDING.
USE • THY • GOLDEN • MOMENTS • WELL.
LIFE • IS • WASTING
DEATH • IS - HASTING
DEATH CONSIGNS • TO • HEAVEN • OR • HELL.
OFPOSTO • DI • ME — PENSI • DI • TE
Whilom ther was in a smal village,
As myn autor make the rehersayle,
A chorle, whiche hadde lust and a grete corage
Within hymself, be diligent travayle
To array his gardeyn with notable apparayle,
Of lengthe and brede yelicke square and longe,
Hegged and dyked to make it sure and stronge.
Alle the aleis were made playne with sond,
The benches turned with newe turves grene,
Sote herbers, with condite at the honde,
That welled up agayne the sonne schene,
Lyke silver stremes as any cristalle clene
The burbly waives is up boyling,
Round as byralle ther beamys out shynge.
JOHN LYDGATE.
The Chorl and the Birde.
To the gay gardins his unstaid desire
Him wholly carried, to refresh his sprights:
There lavish Nature, in her best attire,
Powers forth sweete odors and alluring sights;
[107]
IN • PRAISE -OF • GARDENS
And Arte, with her contending, doth aspire
T' excell the naturall with made delights;
And all, that faire or pleasant may be found,
In riotous excesse doth there abound.
And then againe he turneth to his play,
To spoyle the pleasures of that Paradise;
The wholesome Saulge, and Lavender still gray,
Ranke-smelling Rue, and Cummin good for eyes,
The Roses varying in the pride of May,
Sharpe Isope, good for greene wounds remedies,
Faire Marigoldes, and Bees-alluring thime,
Sweet Marjoram, and Daysies decking prime:
Coole Violets, and Orpine growing still,
Embathed Balme, and cheerfull Gallingale,
Fresh Costmarie, and breathfull Camomil,
Dull Poppie, and drink-quickning Setuale,
Veyne-healing Verven, and hed-purging Dill,
Sound Savorie, and Bazil heartie-hale,
Fat Colworts, and comforting Perseline,
Colde Lettuce, and refreshing Rosemarine.
EDMUND SPENSER.
Muiopotmos: or The Fate of the Butterflie.
[108]
VIRTUE -JOIN • PRECIOUS'- TIME
A Wish
This only grant me, that my means may He
Too low for envy, for contempt too high.
Some honour I would have,
Not from great deeds, but good alone.
The unknown are better, than ill known;
Rumour can ope the grave.
Acquaintance I would have, but when't depends
Not on the number, but the choice of friends.
Books should, not business, entertain the light,
And sleep, as undisturb'd as death, the night.
My house a cottage more
Than palace, and should fitting be,
For all my use, no luxury.
My garden painted o'er
With nature's hand, not art's; and pleasures
yield,
Horace might envy in his Sabine field.
Thus would I double my life's fading space,
For he that runs it well, twice runs his race.
And in this true delight,
[109]
"CT IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS U
These unbought sports, this happy state,
I would not fear nor wish my fate,
But boldly say each night,
To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or, in clouds hide them ; I have liv'd to-day.
A. COWLEY.
The Mower Against Gardens
Luxurious man, to bring his vice in use,
Did after him the word seduce,
And from the fields the flowers and plants allure,
Where Nature was most plain and pure.
He first inclosed within the gardens square
A dead and standing pool of air,
And a more luscious earth for them did knead,
Which stupefied them while it fed.
The pink grew then as double as his mind ;
The nutriment did change the kind.
With strange perfumes he did the roses taint;
And flowers themselves were taught to paint.
The tulip white did for complexion seek,
And learned to interline its cheek;
Its onion root they then so high did hold,
That one was for a meadow sold:
[no]
tT QUID • CELERIUS • TEMPORE ? tT
Another world was searched through oceans new.
To find the marvel of Peru;
And yet these rarities might be allowed
To man, that sovereign thing and proud,
Had he not dealt between the bark and tree,
Forbidden mixtures there to see.
No plant now knew the stock from which it
came;
He grafts upon the wild the tame,
That the uncertain and adulterate fruit
Might put the palate in dispute.
His green seraglio has its eunuchs too,
Lest any tyrant him outdo;
And in the cherry he does Nature vex,
To procreate without a sex.
'Tis all enforced, the fountain and the grot,
While the sweet fields do lie forgot,
Where willing Nature does to all dispense
A wild and fragrant innocence;
And fauns and fairies do the meadows till
More by their presence than their skill.
Their statues polished by some ancient hand,
May to adorn the gardens stand;
But, howsoe'er the figures do excel,
The Gods themselves with us do dwell.
A. MARVELL.
[in]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
A Garden of Flowers
Fairhanded Spring unbosoms every grace,
Throws out the Snowdrop and the Crocus first,
The Daisy, Primrose, Violet darkly blue,
And Polyanthus of unnumbered dyes;
The yellow Wallflower, stained with iron brown,
And lavish Stock that scents the garden round,
From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed
Anemones, Auriculas, enriched
With shining meal o'er all their velvet leaves,
And full Ranunculus of glowing red.
Then comes the Tulip race, whose beauty plays
Her idle freaks, from family diffused
To family, as flies the father dust,
The varied colours run ; and while they break
On the charmed eye, the exulting florist marks,
With secret pride, the wonders of his hand.
No gradual bloom is wanting, from the bud,
First born of Spring, to Summer's musky tribes —
Nor Hyacinths of purest virgin white,
Low bent and blushing inwards — nor Jonquils
Of potent fragrance — nor Narcissus fair,
As o'er the fabled mountain hanging still —
[112]
U YE • KNOW • NOT • THE • HOUR U
Nor broad Carnations, nor gay spotted Pinks,
Nor showered from every bush the damasked
Rose.
JAMES THOMSON.
The Seasons
The Garden
Oh, blest seclusion from a jarring world,
Which he, thus occupied enjoys! Retreat
Cannot indeed to guilty man restore
Lost innocence, or cancel follies past,
But it has peace, and much secures the mind
From all assaults of evil, proving still
A faithful barrier, not o'erleaped with ease
By vicious Custom, raging uncontrolled
Abroad, and desolating public life.
Had I the choice of sublunary good,
What could I wish, that I possess not here?
Health, leisure, means to improve it, friendship,
peace,
No loose or wanton, though a wondering Muse,
And constant occupation without care.
[H3]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Thus blest, I draw a picture of that bliss;
Hopeless indeed that dissipated minds,
And profligate abusers of a world
Created fair so much in vain for them,
Should seek the guiltless joys that I describe,
Allured by my report: but sure no less,
That self-condemned they must neglect the prize,
And what they will not taste must yet approve.
What we admire we praise, and when we praise,
Advance it into notice, that its worth
Acknowledged, others may admire it too.
I therefore recommend, though at the risk
Of popular disgust, yet boldly still,
The cause of grief, and sacred truth
And virtue, and those scenes which God ordained
Should best secure them, and promote them most ;
Scenes that I love, and with regret perceive
Forsaken, or through folly not enjoyed.
Pure is the nymph, though liberal of her smiles,
And chaste, though unconfined, whom I extol.
Not as the prince in Shushan, when he called,
Vainglorious of her charms, his Vashti forth,
To grace the full pavillion. His design
Was but to boast his own peculiar good,
tT EVERY • DAY • HAS • ITS • BOUNDS U
Which all might view with envy, none partake.
My charmer is not mine alone ; my sweets,
And she that sweetens all my bitters too,
Nature, enchanting Nature, in whose form
And lineaments divine I trace a hand
That errs not, and find raptures still renewed,
Is free to all men — universal prize.
Strange that so fair a creature should yet want
Admirers, and be destined to divide
With meaner objects even the few she finds!
WILLIAM COWPER.
The Task, Book III.
The Garden
Fain would my Muse the flow'ry Treasures sing,
And humble glories of the youthful Spring;
Where opening Roses breathing sweets diffuse,
And soft Carnations show'r their balmy dews;
Where Lilies smile in virgin robes of white,
The thin Undress of superficial Light,
And vary'd Tulips show so dazzling gay,
Blushing in bright diversities of day.
Each painted flow'ret in the lake below
[US]
tT IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS U
Surveys its beauties, whence its beauties grow;
And pale Narcissus on the bank, in vain
Transformed, gazes on himself again.
Here aged trees Cathedral Walks compose,
And mount the Hill in venerable rows:
There the green Infants in their beds are laid,
The Garden's Hope, and its expected shade.
Here Orange-trees with blooms and pendants
shine,
And vernal honours in their autumn join;
Exceed their promise in the ripen'd store,
Yet in the rising blossom promise more.
There in bright drops the crystal Fountains play,
By Laurels shielded from the piercing day;
Where Daphne, now a tree as once a maid,
Still from Apollo vindicates her shade,
Still turns her Beauties from th' invading beam,
Nor seeks in vain for succour to the Stream.
The stream at once preserves her virgin leaves,
At once a shelter from her boughs receives,
Where Summer's Beauty midst of Winter stays,
And Winter's Coolness spite of Summer's rays.
ALEXANDER POPE.
[116]
LOOK • INTO • THYSELF
A Farewell
Farewell, thou little Nook of mountain-ground,
Thou rocky corner in the lowest stair
Of that magnificent temple which doth bound
One side of our whole vale with grandeur rare;
Sweet garden-orchard, eminently fair,
The loveliest spot that man hath ever found,
Farewell! — we leave thee to Heaven's peaceful
care,
Thee, and the Cottage which thou dost surround.
Our boat is safely anchored by the shore,
And there will safely ride when we are gone ;
The flowering shrubs that deck our humble door
Will prosper, though untended and alone:
Fields, goods, and far-off chattels we have none :
These narrow bounds contain our private store
Of things earth makes, and sun doth shine upon ;
Here are they in our sight — we have no more.
Dear Spot! which we have watched with tender
heed,
Bringing thee chosen plants and blossoms blown
Among the distant mountains, flower and weed,
[H7]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Which thou hast taken to thee as thy own,
Making all kindness registered and known;
Thou for our sakes, though Nature's child in-
deed,
Fair in thyself and beautiful alone,
Hast taken gifts which thou dost little need.
And O most constant, yet most fickle place,
Thou hast thy wayward moods, as thou dost
show
To them who look not daily on thy face;
Who, being loved, in love no bounds dost know,
And say'st, when we forsake thee, " Let them
go!"
Thou easy-hearted Thing, with thy wild race
Of weeds and flowers, till we return be slow,
And travel with the year at a soft pace.
O happy Garden! whose seclusion deep
Hath been -so friendly to industrious hours;
And to soft slumbers, that did gently steep
Our spirits, carrying with them dreams of flowers,
And wild notes warbled among leafy bowers;
Two burning months let summer overleap,
And, coming back with Her who will be ours,
Into thy bosom we again shall creep.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
[118]
LET • NOTHING • BE • LOST
November's sky is chill and drear,
November's leaf is red and sear:
Late, gazing down the sleepy linn,
That hems our little garden in,
Low in its dark and narrow glen,
You scarce the rivulet might ken,
So thick the tangled greenwood grew,
So feeble trilled the streamlet through:
Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen
Through bush and brier, no longer green
An angry brook, it sweeps the glade,
Brawls over rock and wild cascade,
And, foaming brown with doubled speed,
Hurries its waters to the Tweed.
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
Marmion, Introduction.
Across my garden! and the thicket stirs,
The fountain pulses high in sunnier jets,
The blackcap warbles, and the turtle purrs,
The starling claps his tiny castanets.
Still round her forehead wheels the woodland
dove,
And scatters on her throat the sparks of dew,
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
The kingcup fills her footprint, and above
Broaden the glowing isles of vernal blue.
Hail ample presence of a Queen,
Bountiful, beautiful, apparell'd gay,
Whose mantle every shade of glancing green,
Flies back in fragrant breezes to display
A tunic white as May!
ALFRED TENNYSON.
The Progress of Spring.
Hector in the Garden "
In the garden lay supinely
A huge giant wrought of spade!
Arms and legs were stretched at length
In a passive giant's strength, —
The fine meadow turf, cut finely,
Round them laid and interlaid.
Call him Hector, son of Priam!
Such his title and degree,
With my rake I smoothed his brow,
Both his cheeks I weeded through,
[120]
tf I • WARN • AS • I • MOVE t
But a rhymer such as I am,
Scarce can sing his dignity.
Eyes of gentianellas azure,
Staring, winking at the skies:
Nose of gillyflowers and box;
Scented grasses put for locks,
Which a little breeze at pleasure
Set a-waving round his eyes:
Brazen helm of daffodillies,
With a glitter toward the light;
Purple violets for the mouth,
Breathing perfumes west and south;
And a sword of flashing lilies,
Holden ready for the fight:
And a breastplate made of daisies,
Closely fitting, leaf on leaf;
Periwinkles interlaced
Drawn for belt about the waist;
While the brown bees, humming praises,
Shot their arrows round the chief.
Oh, the birds, the trees, the ruddy
And white blossoms sleek with rain!
[121]
t? IN • PRAISE • OP • GARDENS
Oh, my garden rich with pansies!
Oh, my childhood's bright romances!
All revive, like Hector's body,
And I see them stir again.
And despite life's changes, chances,
And despite the deathbell's toll.
They press on me in full seeming
Help, some angel! stay this dreaming!
As the birds sang in the branches,
Sing God's patience through my soul.
E. B. BROWNING.
Early Influence of Gardens Remains
Always
'Tis sweet to love in childhood, when the souls
that we bequeath
Are beautiful in freshness as the coronals we
wreathe ;
When we feed the gentle robin, and caress the
leaping hound,
And linger latest on the spot where buttercups
are found :
[122]
LIVE • WHILE • YOU • LIVE
When we seek the bee and ladybird with laugh-
ter, shout, and song,
And think the day for wooing them can never
be too long.
O ! 'tis sweet to love in childhood, and tho' stirred
by meanest things,
The music that the heart yields then will never
leave its strings.
'Tis sweet to love in after years the dear one by
our side;
To dote with all the mingled joys of passion,
hope, and pride;
To think the chain around our breast will hold
still warm and fast;
And grieve to know that death must come to
break the link at last.
But when the rainbow span of bliss is waning,
hue by hue;
When eyes forget their kindly beams, and lips
become less true;
When stricken hearts are pining on through
many a lonely hour,
Who would not sigh " 'tis safer far to love the
bird and flower? "
[123]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
'Tis sweet to love in ripen'd age the trumpet
blast of Fame,
To pant to live on glory's scroll, though blood
may trace the name;
'Tis sweet to love the heap of gold, and hug it
to our breast; —
To trust it as the guiding star and anchor of
our rest.
But such devotion will not serve — however
strong the zeal —
To overthrow the altar where our childhood
loved to kneel,
Some bitter moment shall o'ercast the sun of
wealth and power,
And then proud man would fain go back to
worship bird and flower.
ELIZA COOK.
Ille Terrarum
Frae nirly, nippin', Eas'lan' breeze,
Frae Nor'lan' snow, an' haar o' seas,
Weel happit in your gairden trees,
A bonny bit,
Atween the muckle Pentland's knees,
Secure ye sit.
[124]
LEAD • KINDLY • LIGHT
Beeches an' aiks entwine their theek,
An' firs, a stench, auld-farrant clique.
A' simmer day, your chimleys reek,
Couthy and bien;
An' here an' there your windies keek
Amang the green.
A pickle plats an' paths an' posies,
A wheen auld gillyflowers an' roses:
A ring o' wa's the hale encloses
Frae sheep or men;
An' there the auld housie beeks an' doses,
A' by her lane.
The gairdner crooks his weary back
A' day in the pitaity-track,
Or mebbe stops awhile to crack
Wi' Jane the cook,
Or at some buss, worm-eaten-black,
To gie a look.
Frae the high hills the curlow ca's;
The sheep gang baaing by the wa's;
Or whiles a clan o' roosty craws
Cangle thegether ;
The wild bees seek the gairden raws,
Wearit ai' heather.
[125]
tT IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS U
Or in the gloamin' douce an' grey
The sweet-throat mavis tunes her lay,
The herd comes linkin' doun the brae;
An' by degrees
The muckle sitter miine maks way
Amang the trees.
Here aft hae I, wi' sober heart,
For meditation sat apairt,
When orra loves or kittle art
Perplexed my mind;
Here socht a balm for ilka smart
O' human kind.
Here aft, weel neukit by my lane,
Wi' Horace, or perhaps Montaigne,
The mornin' hours hae come an' gane
Abiine my head —
I wad nae gien a chucky-stane
For a' I'd read.
But noo the auld city, street by street,
An' winter fu' o' snaw an' sleet,
Awhile shut in my gangrel feet
An' goavin' mettle;
Noo is the soopit ingle sweet,
An' liltin' kettle.
[126]
WITH • GOD'S • FAVOR
An' noo the winter winds complain;
Cauld lies the glacer in ilka lane;
On draigled hizzie, tautit wean
An' drucken lads,
In the mirk nicht, the winter rain
Dribbles and blads.
Whan bugles frae the Castle rock
An' beaten drum wi' dowie shock,
Wauken, at cauld-rife sax o'clock,
My chitterin' frame,
I mind me on the kintry cock,
The kintry hame.
I mind me on yon bonny bield;
An' Fancy traivels far afield
To gaither a' that gairdens yield
O* sun an' Simmer:
To hearten up a dowie chield,
Fancy's the limmer!
R. L. STEVENSON.
Underwoods.
[127]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
To a Garden
Friend, in thy mountain-side demesne,
My plain-beholding, rosy, green
And linnet-haunted garden ground,
Let still the esculents abound.
Let first the onion flourish there,
Rose among roots, the maiden-fair,
Wine scented and poetic soul
Of the capacious salad bowl.
Let thyme (The mountaineer to dress
The tinier birds) and wading cress,
The lover of the shallow brook,
From all my plots and borders look.
Nor crisp and ruddy radish, nor
Pease-cods for the child's pinafore
Be lacking; nor of salad clan
The last and least that ever ran
About great nature's garden beds.
Nor thence be missed the speary heads
Of artichoke; nor thence the bean
That gathered innocent and green
Outsavours the belauded pea.
These tend, I prithee ; and for me,
Thy most long-suffering master, bring
[128]
I • SHINE • OR • SHROUD
In April, when the linnets sing
And the days lengthen more and more,
At sundown to the garden door.
And I, being provided thus,
Shall, with superb asparagus,
A book, a taper, and a cup
Of country wine, divinely sup.
R. L. STEVENSON.
Underwoods.
The Sun's Travels "
The sun is not a-bed, when I
At night upon my pillow lie;
Still round the earth his way he takes,
And morning after morning makes.
While here at home, in shining day,
We round the sunny garden play,
Each little Indian sleepy-head
Is being kissed and put to bed.
And when at eve I rise from tea,
Day dawns beyond the Atlantic Sea;
[129]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
And all the children of the West
Are getting up and being dressed.
R. L. STEVENSON.
A Child's Garden of Verses.
As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent.
He does not hear; he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For, long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.
R. L. STEVENSON.
A Child's Garden of Verses.
[130]
NOW • OR • NEVER
" Night and Day "
When the golden day is done,
Through the closing portal,
Child and garden, flower and sun,
Vanish all things mortal.
As the blinding shadows fall
As the rays diminish,
Under evening's cloak, they all
Roll away and vanish.
Garden darkened, daisy shut,
Child in bed, they slumber —
Glow-worm in the highway rut,
Mice among the lumber.
In the darkness houses shine,
Parents move with candles;
Till on all, the night divine
Turns the bedroom handles.
Till at last the day begins
In the east a-breaking,
In the hedges and the whins
Sleeping birds awaking.
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
In the darkness shapes of things,
Houses, trees, and hedges,
Clearer grow ; and sparrow's wings
Beat on window ledges.
These shall wrake the yawning made;
She the door shall open —
Finding dew on garden glade
And the morning broken.
There my garden grows again
Green and rosy painted,
As at eve behind the pane
From my eyes it fainted.
Just as it was shut away,
Toylike, in the even,
Here I see it glow with day
Under glowing heaven.
Every path and every plot,
Every bush of roses,
Every blue forget-me-not,
Where the dew reposes.
[132]
WITHOUT • SUN • I • KEEP • SILENCE
" Up ! " they cry, " the day is come
On the smiling valleys:
We have beat the morning drum ;
Playmate, join your allies ! "
R. L. STEVENSON.
A Child's Garden of Verses.
My pleasaunce was an undulating green,
Stately with trees whose shadows slept below,
With glimpses of smooth garden-beds between
Like flame or sky or snow.
Woodpigeons cooed there, stock-doves nestled
there ;
My trees were full of songs and flowers and
fruit ;
Their branches spread a city in the air
And mice lodged in their root.
CHRISTINA E. ROSSETTI.
From House to Home.
[133]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
The Garden in September*
Now thin mists temper the slow ripening beams
Of the September sun: his golden gleams
On gaudy flowers shine, that prank the rows
Of high-grown hollyhocks, and all tall shows
That Autumn flaunteth in his bushy bowers;
Where tomtits hanging from the drooping heads
Of giant sunflowers, peck the nutty seeds;
And in the feathery aster bees on wing
Seize and set free the honied flowers,
Till thousand stars leap with their visiting:
While over across the path mazily flit,
Unpiloted in the sun,
The dreamy butterflies
With dazzling colors pondered and soft glooms,
White, black and crimson stripes, and peacock
eyes,
Or on chance flowers sit,
With idle effort plundering one by one
The nectaries of deepest-throated blooms.
With gentle flaws the western breeze
Into the garden saileth,
* Copyright, 1893, The Macmillan Co.
[134]
tT THOUGH • SILENT • I • SPEAK tT
Scarce here and there stirring the single trees,
For his sharpness he waileth:
So long a comrade of the bearded corn,
Now from the stubbles whence the shocks are
borne,
O'er dewy lawns he turns to stray,
As mindful of the kisses and soft play
Wherewith he enamored the light-headed way,
Ere he deserted her;
Lover of fragrance, and too late repents;
No more of heavy hyacinth now may drink,
No spicy pink,
Nor summer's rose, nor garnered lavender,
But the few lingering scents
Of streaked pea, and gillyflower, and stocks
Of courtly purple, and aromatic phlox.
And at all times to hear the drowsy tones
Of dizzy flies, and humming drones,
With sudden flap of pigeon wings in the sky,
Or the wild cry
Of thirsty rooks, that scour ascare
The distant blue, to watering as they fare
With creaking pinions, or — on business bent,
If aught their ancient politics displease, —
[135]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Wheel round their nested colony, and there
Settling in ragged parliament,
Some stormy council hold in the high trees.
ROBERT BRIDGES.
The pinks along my garden walks
Have all shot forth their summer stalks,
Thronging their buds 'mong tulips hot,
And blue forget-me-not.
Their dazzling snows forth-bursting soon
Will lade the idle breath of June:
And waken thro' the fragrant night
To steal the pale moonlight.
The nightingale at end of May
Lingers each year for their display;
Till when he sees their blossoms blown,
He knows the spring is flown.
June's birth they greet, and when their bloom
Dislustres, withering as his tomb,
Then summer hath a shortening day;
And steps slow to decay.
ROBERT BRIDGES.
[136]
THE • DAY • IS • THINE
Autumn Tints
Coral-colored yew-berries
Strew the garden ways,
Hollyhocks and sunflowers
Make a dazzling blaze
In these latter days.
Marigolds by cottage doors
Flaunt their golden pride,
Crimson-punctured bramble leaves
Dapple far and wide
The green mountain side.
For the year that's on the wane,
Gathering all its fire,
Flares up through the kindling world
As, ere they expire
Flames leap high and higher.
MATHILDE BLIND.
The garden walks are wet with dew
Fresh gather'd from the rosy hours,
The busy insects hum anew,
And stir to life the sleeping flow'rs;
[137]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
While, gaily from the green o'erhead,
Upon a spray of tender thorn
That blushes into white and red,
A glad thrush sings and makes the morn!
WILLIAM ACKERMAN.
The little window looks upon the East,
And far beneath the scented garden ground
Exhales its fragrance; it is wafted up —
The white magnolia sends a cloud of scent
Which oft in certain quarters of the wind
Pours tide-like through the casement. You detect
The faint sweet perfume of white rose and red.
The lily languishes and droops and dies,
But cannot reach it. Yet the maiden knows
Its virgin bloom is ever pouring out
Delicious life in aspiration there,
And it stands first of all her garden queens
In her pure love and vivifying care.
DORA STUART-MONTEITH.
Avalon.
[138]
REDEEM • YE • TIME
House Fantastic
Stood the house where I was born
In a garden grown of old,
Where the heavy-scented flowers
Lay in wait to trap the hours,
Snare the days in books and bowers
And the moons in mazes fold.
ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE.
A Book of Mystery and Vision.
In Springtime
My garden blazes brightly with the rose-bush
and the peach,
And the koil sings above it, in the siris by
the well;
From the creeper-covered trellis comes the squir-
rel's chattering speech,
And the blue-jay screams and flutters where
the cherry sat-bhai dwell.
But the rose has lost its fragrance, and the koil's
note is strange;
I am sick of endless sunshine, sick of blossom-
burdened bough.
[139]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Give me back the leafless woodlands where the
winds of Springtime range —
Give me back one day in England — for it's
Spring in England now!
Through the pines the gusts are blooming, o'er
the brown fields blowing chill;
From the furrow of the ploughshare streams
the fragrance of the loam;
And the hawk nests on the cliff-side and the
jackdaw in the hill —
And my heart is back in England 'mid the
sight and sounds of Home.
But the garland of the sacrifice this wealth of
rose and peach is;
Ah ! koil, little koil, singing on the siris bough.
In my ears the knell of exile your ceaseless bell-
like speech is —
Can you tell me aught of England, or of
Spring in England now?
RUDYARD KIPLING.
Departmental Ditties.
[140]
LEARN • HOW • TO • LIVE
Along the lawns the tulip-lamps are lit,
Amber, and amaranth, and ivory,
Porphyry, silver and chalcedony —
Filled with the sunlight and the joy of it.
The tulip lamps are lit — the Spring's own gold
Glows burning bright in each illumined cup,
Wrought in those secret mines of dusky mould
Where Winter's hidden hoard was garnered
up.
The flame will fade, the goblets break and fall,
Strewing the dim earth with their beauty's
wrack ;
All will be spent and past their festival
Ere the first vagrant swallow shall come back.
ROSAMUND MARRIOTT WATSON.
" In the Heart of a Garden."
Vestured and veiled with twilight,
Lulled in the winter's ease,
Dim, and happy, and silent,
My garden dreams by its trees.
[141]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Urn of the sprayless fountain,
Glimmering nymph and faun,
Gleam through the dark-plumed cedar,
Fade on the dusky lawn.
Here is no stir of summer,
Here is no pulse of spring;
Never a bud to burgeon,
Never a bird to sing.
Dreams — and the kingdom of quiet!
Only the dead leaves lie
Over the fallen roses
Under the shrouded sky.
Folded and fenced with silence,
Mindless of mail and mart,
It is twilight here in my garden,
And twilight here in my heart.
ROSAMUND MARRIOTT WATSON.
" In the Heart of a Garden."
So while with frost my garden lies,
So still, so bright, my garden is,
For sure the fields of Paradise
Show not more fair than this:
[142]
U THINK • HOW • TO • DIE ET
The streets of pearl, the gates of gold,
Are they, indeed, more peace-possessed
Than this white pleasaunce, pure and cold,
Against an amber West?
ROSAMUND MARRIOTT WATSON.
" In the Heart of a Garden."
An Autumn Garden
My tent stands in a garden
Of aster and golden-rod,
Tilled by the rain and the sunshine,
And sown by the hand of God, —
And old New England pasture
Abandoned to peace and time,
And by the magic of beauty
Reclaimed to the sublime.
About it are golden woodlands
Of tulip and hickory;
On the open ridge behind it
You many mount to a glimpse of sea,-
The far-off, blue, Homeric
Rim of the world's great shield,
[143]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
A border of boundless glamour
For the soul's familiar field.
In purple and gray-wrought lichen
The boulders lie in the sun;
Along its grassy footpath,
The white-tailed rabbits run.
The crickets work and chirrup
Through the still afternoon;
And the owl calls at twilight
Under the frosty moon.
The odorous wild grape clambers
Over the tumbling wall,
And through the autumnal quiet
The chestnuts open and fall.
Sharing time's freshness and fragrance,
Part of the earth's great soul,
Here man's spirit may ripen
To wisdom serene and whole.
Shall we not grow with the asters? —
Never reluctant nor sad,
Not counting the cost of being,
Living to dare and be glad.
[H4]
WATCH • AND • PRAY
Shall we not lift with the crickets
A chorus of ready cheer,
Braving the frost of oblivion,
Quick to be happy here ?
The deep red cones of the sumach
And the woodbine's crimson sprays
Have bannered the common roadside
For the pageant of passing days.
These are the oracles Nature
Fills with her holy breath,
Giving them glory of color,
Transcending the shadow of death.
Here in the sifted sunlight
A spirit seems to brood
On the beauty and worth of being,
In tranquil, instinctive mood ;
And the heart, athrob with gladness
Such as the wise earth knows,
Wells with a full thanksgiving
For the gifts that life bestows:
For the ancient and virile nurture
Of the teeming primordial ground,
[H5]
tl IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
For the splendid gospel of color,
The rapt revelations of sound ;
For the morning-blue above us
And the rusted gold of the fern,
For the chickadee's call to valor
Bidding the faint-heart turn;
For fire and running water,
Snowfall and summer rain;
For sunsets and quiet meadows,
The fruit and the standing grain ;
For the solemn hour of moonrise
Over the crest of trees,
When the mellow lights are kindled
In the lamps of the centuries.
For those who wrought aforetime,
Led by the mystic strain
To strive for the larger freedom,
And live for the greater gain;
For plenty and peace and playtime,
The homely goods of earth,
And for rare immaterial treasures
Accounted of little worth ;
For art and learning and friendship,
Where beneficent truth is supreme,
[146]
I • SHALL • GO • AND • RETURN
Those everlasting cities
Built on the hills of dream;
For all things growing and goodly
That foster this life, and breed
The immortal flower of wisdom
Out of the mortal seed.
But most of all for the spirit
That can not rest nor bide
In stale and sterile convenience,
Nor safety proven and tried,
But still inspired and driven,
Must seek what better may be,
And up from the loveliest garden
Must climb for a glimpse of sea.
BLISS CARMAN.
The Tasteless Garden
His Gardens next your admiration call,
On every side you look, behold the Wall!
No pleasing Intricacies intervene,
No artful wildness to perplex the scene ;
[147]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Grove nods at grove, each Alley has a brother,
And half the platform just reflects the other.
The sufF ring eye inverted Nature sees,
Trees cut to Statues, statues thick as trees;
With here a fountain, never to be played ;
And there a summer-house, that knows no shade ;
Here Amphitrite sails thro' myrtle bowers;
There Gladiators fight, or die in flowers;
Unwatered see the drooping sea-horse mourn,
And swallows roost in Nilus' dusty Urn.
ALEXANDER POPE.
Moral Essays, Ep. IV.
Child's Song
I have a garden of my own,
Shining with flowers of every hue;
I love it dearly while alone,
But I shall love it more with you:
And there the golden bees shall crone,
In summer-time at break of morn,
And wake us with their busy hum
Around the Siha's fragrant thorn.
[148]
CT TO-DAY • IS • WITH • YOU U
I have a fawn from Aden's land,
On leafy buds and berries nurst;
And you shall feed him from your hand,
Though he may start with fear at first.
And I will lead you where he lies
For shelter in the noon-tide heat;
And you may touch his sleepy eyes,
And feel his little silvery feet.
THOMAS MOORE.
Gardens Lost and Found
THE • HOUR • THOU • READEST -NOW • ON • ME
WILL • NEVER • MORE • BE • OFFERED • THEE.
IF • THOU • TAK'ST • HEED • WISE • THOU • WILT • BE.
READ • HERE • LIGHT'S • MESSAGE
And the spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
The snowdrop and the violet,
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour,
sent
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.
Then he pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness.
And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale,
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green;
[153]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense;
And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest,
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air —
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare:
And the wand-like lily which lifted up,
As a Maenad, its moonlight coloured cup,
Till the fiery star which is its eye,
Gazed through the clear dew on the tender sky;
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows;
And all rare blossoms from every clime
Grew in that garden in perfect prime.
And on the stream whose inconstant bosom
Was prankt under boughs of embowering blos-
som,
With golden and green light, slanting through
Their heaven of many a tangled hue.
[154]
THE • PAST • IS -DEAD
Broad water-lilies lay tremulously,
And starry river-buds glimmered by,
And around them the soft stream did glide and
dance
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.
And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss,
Which led through the garden along and across,
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,
Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells
As fair as the fabulous asphodels,
And flowrets which drooping as day drooped too
Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue,
To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.
And from this undefiled Paradise,
The flowers (as an infant's awakening eyes
Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet
Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),
WTien Heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them,
As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem,
[155]
tT IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS tT
Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun;
For each one was interpenetrated
With the light and the odour its neighbour shed,
Like young lovers whom youth and love made
dear
Wrapped and rilled by their mutual atmosphere.
*****
There was a Power in this sweet place,
An Eve in this Eden; a ruling grace
Which to the flowers did they waken or dream,
Was as God is to the starry scheme,
A Lady, the wonder of her kind,
Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind
Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and mo-
tion
Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,
Tended the garden from morn to even:
And the meteors of that sublunar heaven,
Like the lamps of the air when night walks forth,
Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth!
*****
[156]
WATCH • AND • PRAY
Her step seemed to pity the grass it prest;
You might hear by the heaving of her breast,
That the coming and the going of the wind
Brought pleasure there and left passion behind.
*****
I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet
Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet;
I doubt not they felt the spirit that came
From her glowing fingers thro' all their frame.
She sprinkled bright water from the stream
On those that were faint with the sunny beam;
And out of the cups of the heavy flowers
She emptied the rain of the thunder showers.
She lifted their heads with her tender hands,
And sustained them with rods and osier bands;
If the flowers had been her own infants she
Could never have nursed them more tenderly.
PERCY B. SHELLEY.
The Sensitive Plant.
[157]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
An Eastern City's Garden
Black the garden-bowers and grots
Slumber'd: the solemn palms were ranged
Above, unwoo'd of summer wind;
A sudden splendour from behind
Flush'd all the leaves with gold-green,
And, flowing rapidly between
Their interspaces, counterchanged
The level lake with diamond-plots
Of dark and bright. A lovely time,
For it was in the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
Thence thro' the garden I was drawn —
A realm of pleasance, many a mound,
And many a shadow-chequer'd lawn
Full of the city's stilly sound,
And deep myrrh-thickets blowing round
The stately cedar, tamarisks,
Thick rosaries of scented thorn,
Tall orient shrubs, and obelisks
Craven with emblems of the time,
[158]
I • RENEW • MYSELF • EVERY • DAY tT
In honour of the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
Recollections of the Arabian Nights.
But I know where a garden grows,
Fairer than aught in the world beside,
All made up of the lily and rose
That blew by night, when the season is good,
To the sound of dancing music and flutes.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
Maud.
Across the Convent garden walls
The wind blows from the silver seas;
Black shadow of the cypress falls
Between the moon-meshed olive trees;
Sleep-walking from their golden bowers,
Flit disembodied orange flowers.
MATHILDE BLIND.
(The Mystic's Vision.)
[159]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
He passed the garden where, snow white and red,
I tended the flowers which gave us our bread,
And watered my lilies and roses;
He passed and repassed both early and late,
And lingering, often would lean on the gate
While I tied for him one of my posies.
Though thou seest them not with the bodily eye,
The language of flowers much better than I,
I know that thou knowest, my brother.
Violets — then golden daffodils
Which the light of the sun like a winecup fills —
Tall tulips like flames upspringing —
Golden-crown wall-flowers bright as his locks —
Marigolds — balsams — and perfumed stocks
Whose scent's like a blackbird's singing.
MATHILDE BLIND.
(Renunciation.)
I planted a rose tree in my garden,
In early days when the year was young;
I thought it would bear me roses, roses,
While nights were dewy and days were long.
[160]
PLANT • AND • WAIT
It bore but once, and a white rose only —
A lovely rose with petals of light;
Like the moon in heaven, supreme and lonely,
And the lightning struck it one summer night.
MATHILDE BLIND.
(Love in Exile.)
Only Roses
To a garden full of posies
Cometh one to gather flowers;
And he wanders through its bowers
Toying with the wanton roses,
Who, uprising from their beds,
Hold on high their shameless heads
With their pretty lips a-pouting,
Never doubting — never doubting
That for Cytherean posies
He would gather aught but roses.
In a nest of weeds and nettles,
Lay a violet, half hidden;
Hoping that his glance unbidden
Yet might fall upon her petals.
Though she lived alone, apart,
[161]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Hope lay nestling at her heart,'
But alas! the cruel awakening
Set her little heart a-breaking,
For he gathers for his posies
Only roses — only roses.
W. S. GILBERT.
(The Bab Ballads.)
In a College Garden
Birds, that cry so loud in the old, green, bowery
garden,
Your song is of Love! Love! Love! Will ye
weary not nor cease?
For the loveless soul grows sick, the heart that
the grey days harden;
I know too well that ye love! I would ye
should hold your peace!
I too have seen Love rise, like a star; I have
marked his setting;
I dreamed in my folly and pride that Life
without Love were peace.
[162]
I • TRAVEL • FAST
But if Love should await me yet, in the land of
sleep and forgetting —
Ah, bird, could you sing me this, I would not
your song should cease!
A. C. BENSON.
(Poems.)
rhe Moss-Rose
Walking to-day in your garden, O gracious lady,
Little you thought, as you turned in that alley
remote and shady
And gave me a rose, and asked if I knew its
savour —
The old-world scent of the moss-rose, flower of
a bygone favour —
Little you thought, as you waited the word of
appraisement,
Laughing at first, and then amazed at my amaze-
ment,
That the rose you gave was a gift already cher-
ished,
And the garden whence you plucked it a garden
long perished.
[163]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
But I — I saw that garden, with its one treasure
The tiny moss-rose, tiny even by childhood's
measure.
And the long morning shadow of the rusty laurel,
And a boy and a girl beneath it, flushed with
a childish quarrel.
She wept for her one little bud; but he, out-
reaching
The hand of brotherly right, would take it for
all her beseeching;
And she flung her arms about him, and gave like
a sister,
And laughed at her own tears, and wept again
when he kissed her.
So the rose is mine long since, and whenever I
find it
And drink again the sharp sweet scent of the
moss behind it,
I remember the tears of a child, and her love
and her laughter,
And the morning shadows of youth, and the night
that fell thereafter.
HENRY NEWBOLT.
[164]
The Garden of Peace
ONLY • AS I • ABIDE • IN • THE • LIGHT • OF
• HEAVEN •
DO I • FULFILL • THE • WILL - OF • MY • MAKER.
PRAISE • A • FAIR • DAY • AT • NIGHT U
When almost ended was the month of May,
And I had roamed, throughout the summer's day,
Along the meadow green, whereof I told,
The freshly springing daisy to behold,
And when the sun declined from south to west,
And closed was this fair flower, and gone to rest
For fear of darkness that she held in dread,
Home to my house full hastily I sped;
And, in a little garden of my own,
Well-benched with fresh-cut turf, with grass
o'ergrown,
I bade that men my couch should duly make;
For daintiness and for the summer's sake,
I bade them strew fresh blossoms o'er my bed.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
(Prologue of The Legend of Good
A Flower Garden
Tell me, ye Zephyrs, that unfold,
While fluttering o'er this gay Recess,
Pinions that fanned the teeming mould
[167]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Of Eden's blissful wilderness,
Did only softly stealing hours
There close the peaceful lives of flowers?
Say, when the moving creatures saw
All kinds commingled without fear,
Prevailed a like indulgent law
For the still growths that prosper here?
Did wanton faun and kid forbear
The half-blown rose, the lily spare?
Or peeped they often from their beds,
And prematurely disappeared,
Devoured like pleasure ere it spreads
A bosom to the sun endeared?
If such their harsh untimely doom,
It falls not here on bud or bloom.
All summer long the happy Eve
Of this fair Spot her flowers may bind,
Nor e'er, with ruffled fancy, grieve,
From the next glance she casts, to find
That love for little things by Fate
Is rendered vain as love for great.
[168]
SO • MARCHES • THE • GOD -OF- DAY
Yet, where the guardian fence is wound,
So subtly are our eyes beguiled
We see not nor suspect a bound,
No more than in some forest wild ;
The sight is free as air — or crost
Only by art in nature lost.
And, though the jealous turf refuse
By random footsteps to be prest,
And feed on never-sullied dews,
Ye, gentle breezes from the west,
With all the ministers of hope
Are tempted to this sunny slope!
And hither throngs of birds resort;
Some, inmates lodged in shady nests,
Some, perched on stems of stately port
That nod to welcome transient guests;
While hare and leveret, seen at play,
Appear not more shut out than they.
Apt emblem (for repose of pride)
This delicate enclosure shows
Of modest kindness, that would hide
The firm protection she bestows;
[169]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Of manners, like its viewless fence,
Ensuring peace to innocence.
Thus spake the moral Muse — her wing
Abruptly spreading to depart,
She left that farewell offering,
Moments of some docile heart;
That may respect the good old age
When Fancy was Truth's willing Page;
And Truth would skim the flowery glade,
Though entering but as Fancy's Shade.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love.
News from the humming city comes to it
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells;
And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear
The windy clanging of the minster clock;
Although between it and the garden lies
A league of grass, wash'd by a slow broad stream
That, stirr'd with languid pulses of the oar,
Waves all its lilies.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
(The Gardener's Daughter.)
[170]
IT • IS • LATER • THAN • YOU • THINK
A garden bower'd close
With plaited allays of the trailing rose,
Long alleys falling down to twilight grots,
Or opening upon level plots
Of crowned lilies, standing near
Purple-spiked lavendar :
Whither in after life retired
From brawling storms,
From weary wind;
With youthful fancy reinspired,
We may hold converse, with all forms
Of the many-sided mind. . . .
ALFRED TENNYSON.
In Green Old Gardens
In green old gardens, hidden away
From sight of revel and sound of strife,
Where the bird may sing out his soul ere
he die,
Nor fears for the night, so he lives his day;
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Where the high red walls, which are growing
grey
With their lichen and moss embroideries,
Seem sadly and sternly to shut out life,
Because it is often as red as they;
Where even the bee has time to glide
(Gathering gayly his honey's store)
Right to the heart of the old-world flowers —
China-asters and purple stocks,
Dahlias and tall red holly-hocks,
Laburnums raining their golden showers,
Columbines prim of the folded core,
And lupins, and larkspurs, and " London pride " ;
Where the heron is waiting amongst the reeds,
Grown tame in the silence that reigns around,
Broken only, now and then,
By shy woodpecker or noisy jay,
By the far-off watch-dog's muffled bay;
But where never the purposeless laughter of
men,
Or the seething city's murmurous sound
Will float up over the river-weeds.
[172]
tT IN • HEAVEN • IS • REST U
Here may I live what life I please,
Married and buried out of sight, —
Married to pleasure, and buried to pain, —
Hidden away amongst scenes like these,
Under the fans of the chestnut trees;
Living my child-life over again,
With the further hope of a fallen delight,
Blithe as the birds and wise as the bees.
In green old gardens, hidden away
From sight of revel and sound of strife, —
Here have I leisure to breathe and move,
And to do my work in a nobler way ;
To sing my songs, and to say my say;
To dream my dreams, and to love my love;
To hold my faith, and to live my life,
Making the most of its shadowy day.
VIOLET FANE.
Shut Out
The door was shut, I looked between
Its iron bars; and saw it lie,
My garden, mine, beneath the sky,
Pied with all flowers bedewed and green.
[173]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
From bough to bough the song-birds crossed,
From flower to flower the moths and bees;
With all its nests and stately trees
It had been mine, and it was lost.
A shadowless spirit kept the gate,
Blank and unchanging like the grave,
Is peering through, said : " Let me have
Some buds to cheer my outcast state."
He answered not. " Or give me, then,
But one small twig from shrub or tree,
And bid my home remember me
Until I come to it again."
The spirit was silent; but he took
Mortar and stone to build a wall;
He left no loophole great or small
Through which my straining eyes might look.
So now I sit here quite alone,
Blinded with tears; nor grieve for that,
For nought is left worth looking at
Since my delightful land is gone.
[174]
LIVE • TO • DIE U
A violet bed is budding near,
Wherein a lark has made her nest;
And good they are, but not the best;
And dear they are, but so dear.
CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
An October Garden
In my Autumn garden I was fain
To mourn among my scattered roses;
Alas for that last rosebud which uncloses
To Autumn's languid sun and rain
When all the world is on the wane!
Which has not felt the sweet restraint of June,
Nor heard the nightingale in tune.
Broad-faced asters by my garden walk,
You are but coarse compared with roses;
More choice, more dear that rosebud which
uncloses,
Faint-scented, pinched, upon its stock,
That least and last, which cold winds balk;
A rose it is though least and last of all,
A rose to me though at the fall.
CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
[i75]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
O my Garden, full of roses,
Red as passion and as sweet,
Failing not when summer closes,
Lasting on through cold and heat!
O my Garden, full of lilies,
White as peace, and very tall,
In your midst my heart so still is
I can hear the last leaf fall.
PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON.
(Garden Secrets.)
In a Kentish Rose Garden
Beside a Dial in the leafy close,
Where every bush was burning with the Rose,
With million roses falling flake by flake
Upon the lawn in fading summer snows:
I read the Persian Poet's rhyme of old,
Each thought a ruby in a ring of gold —
Old thoughts so young, that, after all these years,
They're writ on every rose-leaf yet unrolled.
[176]
SING • WITH • THE • BIRDS
You may not know the secret tongue aright
The Sunbeams on their rosy tablets write;
Only a poet may perchance translate
Those ruby-tinted hieroglyphs of light.
MATHILDE BLIND.
(On Reading the " Rubaiyat of Omar Khay-
yam")
A Garden Song
Here, in this sequestered close
Blown the hyacinth and the rose;
Here beside the modest stock
Flaunts the flowing holly-hock;
Here, without a pang, one sees
Ranks, conditions and degrees.
All the seasons run their race
In this quiet resting-place;
Peach, and apricot, and fig
Here will ripen, and grow big;
Here is store and overplus,—
More had not Alcinoiis!
[177]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Here, in alleys, cool and green,
Far ahead the thrush is seen;
Here along the. southern wall
Keeps the bee his festival;
All is quiet else — afar
Sounds of toil and turmoil are.
Here be shadows large and long;
Here be spaces meet for song;
Grant, O garden-god, that I
Now that none profane is nigh, —
Now that mood and moment please,
Find the fair Pierides.
AUSTIN DOBSON.
(At the Sign of the Lyre.)
The Spirit of all Gardens
Here I untrammel.
Here I pluck loose the body's cerementing,
And break the tomb of life; here I shake off
The bur o' the world, man's congregation shun,
And to the antique order of the dead ,
[178]
PAX • VOBISCUM
I take the tongueless vows; my call is set
Here in thy bosom ; my little trouble is ended
In a little peace.
FRANCIS THOMPSON.
(An Anthem of Earth.)
[179]
The Garden of God and the Soul
I • DIE - TO-DAY • AND
I • LIVE • TO-MORROW.
t? ARISE -MY -SOUL- AND -REJOICE
And the Lord God planted a garden eastward,
in Eden; and there he put the man whom he
had formed. And out of the ground made the
Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to
the sight, and good for food.
Genesis, ch. 2, V 8-9.
If thou sit here to view this pleasant garden
place,
Think thus — At last will come a frost and all
these flowers deface:
But if thou sit at ease to rest thy weary bones,
Remember death brings final rest to all our
grievous groans;
So whether for delight, or here thou sit for ease,
Think still upon the latter day : so shall thou
God best please.
GEORGE GASCOIGNE.
Lines written on a Garden Seat.
How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! Ev'n as the flowers in Spring,
To which besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tribute of pleasure bring;
[183]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.
Who would have thought my shrivell'd heart
Could have recover'd greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
Where they together,
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quick'ning, bringing down to Hell
And up to Heaven in an hour;
Making a chiming of a passing bell.
We say amiss
This or that is;
Thy word is all, if we could spell.
O that I once past changing were,
Fast in thy Paradise where no flower can wither !
Many a Spring I shoot up fair,
OfFring at Heaven, growing and groaning
thither;
Nor doth my flower
Want a Spring shower,
My sins and I joining together.
[184]
IN • CCELO • QUIES
But while I grow in a straight line,
Still upwards bent, as if Heaven were mine own,
Thy anger comes and I decline;
What frost to that? What pole is not the zone
Where all things burn,
WTien thou dost turn,
And the least frown of Thine is shown?
And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my only light!
— It cannot be
That I am he
On whom Thy tempest befell all night.
These are Thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide ;
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.
Who would be more
Travelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.
GEORGE HERBERT.
The Flower.
[185]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Brave flowers — that I could gallant it like you,
And be as little vain!
You come abroad, and make a harmless show,
And to your beds of earth again.
You are not proud: you know your birth:
For your embroider'd garments are from earth.
You do obey your months and times, but I
Would have it ever Spring;
My fate would know no Winter, never die,
Nor think of such a thing.
O that I could my bed of earth but view
And smile, and look as cheerfully as you!
O teach me to see Death and not to fear,
But rather to take truce!
How often have I seen you at a bier,
And there look fresh and spruce!
You fragrant flowers! then teach me, that my
breath
Like yours may sweeten and perfume my death.
HENRY KING.
A Contemplation upon Flowers.
[i 86]
FESTINA • LENTE
The Garden of Eden
So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champion head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied; and overhead up-grew
Insuperable highth of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene, and, as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verdurous wall of Paradise upsprung;
Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neighbouring round.
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue,
Appeared, with gay enamelled colours mixed ;
In which the sun more glad impressed his beams
Than in fair Evening cloud, or humid bow,
When God hath showered the earth; so lovely
seemed
That landskip. And of pure now purer air
[187]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair. Now gentle gales
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Prose balmy spoils. . . .
Beneath him, with new wonder, now he views,
To all delight of human sense exposed,
In narrow room Nature's whole wealth; yea,
more ! —
A Heaven on Earth: for blissful Paradise
Of God the garden was, by him in the east
Of Eden planted. Eden stretched her line
From Auran eastward to the royal towers
Of great Seleucia, built by Grecian Kings,
Or where the sons of Eden long before
Dwelt in Telasser. In this pleasant soil
His far more pleasant garden God ordained.
Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow
All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste;
And all amid them stood the Tree of Life,
High, eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold; and next to life,
Our death, the Tree of Knowledge, grew fast by —
Knowledge of good, bought dear by knowing ill.
[188]
LEX • DEI • LUX • DIEI
Southward through Eden went a river large,
Nor changed his course, but through the shaggly
hill
Passed underneath ingulfed ; for God had thrown
That mountain, as his garden-mould, high raised
Upon the rapid current, which, through veins
Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn,
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill
Watered the garden; thence united fell
Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,
Which from his darksome passage now appears,
And now, divided into four main streams,
Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm
And country whereof here needs no account;
But rather to tell how, if Art could tell
How, from that sapphire fount the aisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,
With mazy error under pendent shades
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art
In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade
Imbrowned the noontide bowers. Thus was this
place,
[189]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
A happy rural seat of various view!
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and
balm;
Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind,
Hung amiable — Hesperian fables true,
If true, here only — and of delicious taste.
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed,
Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap
Of some irriguous valley spread her store,
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently weeps
Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall
Down the slope hills dispersed, or in a lake,
That to the fringed bank with myrtle crowned
Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.
The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grave, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal Spring.
JOHN MILTON.
Paradise Lost (Bk. IV).
[190]
UMBRA • DEI
In a garden — man was placed,
Meet abode for innocence,
With his Maker's image graced;
— Sin crept in and drove him thence,
Through the world, a wretch undone,
Seeking rest, and finding none.
In a garden — on the night,
When our Saviour was betray'd,
With that world-redeeming might,
In his agony he pray'd!
Till he drank the vengeance up,
And with mercy fill'd the cup.
In a garden — on the cross,
When the spear his heart had riven,
And for earth's primeval loss,
Heaven's best ransom had been given,
— Jesus rested from his woes,
Jesus from the dead arose.
JAMES MONTGOMERY.
Garden Thoughts.
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western
sky in the night,
I mourn'd — and yet shall mourn with ever-re-
turning spring.
O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you
bring!
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in
the west,
And thought of him I love.
In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house,
near the white-wash'd palings,
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-
shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate,
with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle . . . and from this
bush in the door-yard,
With delicate-color'd blossoms, and heart-shaped
leaves of rich green,
A sprig, with its flower, I break.
In the swamp, in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
[192]
U THUS • ETERNITY • APPROACHETH U
Solitary, the thrush,
The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the
settlements,
Sings by himself a song.
Sing on, there in the swamp!
0 singer bashful and tender! I hear your notes
— I hear your call;
1 hear — I come presently — I understand you;
But a moment I linger — for the lustrous star has
detained me;
The star, my departing comrade, holds and de-
tains me.
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one
there I loved?
And how shall I deck my song for the large
sweet soul that has gone?
And what shall my perfume be, for the grave of
him I love?
Sea-winds, blown from east and west,
Blown from the eastern sea, and blown from the
western sea, till there on the prairies
meeting;
[193]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
These, and with these, and the breath of my
chant,
I perfume the grave of him I love.
Sing on! sing on, you gray-brown bird!
Sing from the swamps, the recesses — pour your
chant from the bushes;
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and
pines.
Sing on, dearest brother, warble your reedy song;
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid, and free, and tender!
O wild and loose to my soul ! O wondrous singer !
You only I hear . . . yet the Star holds me
(but will soon depart;)
Yet the lilac, with mastering odor, holds me.
And the singer so shy to the rest receiv'd me;
The gray-brown bird I know, receiv'd us com-
rades three;
And he sang what seem'd the carol of death, and
a verse for him I love.
t'94]
tT UT • FILII • LUCIS • INCEDITE U
From deep secluded recesses,
From the fragrant cedars, and the ghostly pines
so still,
Came the carol of the bird.
And the charm of the carol rapt me,
As I held, as if by their hands, my comrades in
the night;
And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of
the bird.
Passing the visions, passing the night;
Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades'
hands;
Passing the song of the hermit bird, and the
tallying song of my soul,
(Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet vary-
ing, ever-altering song,
As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising
and falling, flooding the night,
Sadly sinking and fainting, as waning and
warning, and yet again bursting with joy,
Covering the earth, and filling the spread of the
heaven,
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from
recesses, )
[195]
U IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS tJ
Passing, I leave thee, lilac with heart-shaped
leaves ;
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming,
returning with spring.
I cease from my song for thee;
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the
west, communing with thee,
O comrade lustrous, with silver face in the night.
Yet each I keep, and all, rebrievements out of
the night;
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown
bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my
soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star, with the
countenance full of woe,
With the lilac tall, and its blossoms of mastering
odor ;
With the holders holding my hand, nearing the
call of the bird,
Comrades mine, and I in the midst, and their
memory ever I keep — for the dead I
loved so well;
[196]
IN • LUCE • TUA • FRUAMUR • LUCE
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and
lands . . . and this for his dear sake;
Lilac and star and bird, twined with the chant
of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines, and the cedars dusk
and dim.
WALT WHITMAN.
Leaves of Grass.
If I could put my woods in song
And tell what's there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void.
In my plot no tulips blow, —
Snow — loving pines and oaks instead;
And rank the savage maples grow
From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red.
My garden is a forest ledge
Which older forests bound;
The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,
Then plunge to depths profound.
[197]
U IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS tT
Here once the Deluge ploughed,
Laid the terraces one by one;
Ebbing later whence it flowed,
They bleach and dry in the sun.
The sowers made haste to depart, —
The wind and the birds which sowed it;
Not for fame, nor by rules of art,
Planted these, and tempests flowed it.
Waters that wash my garden-side
Play not in Nature's lawful web,
They hold not moon or solartide, —
Five years elapse from flood to ebb.
Here hasted, in old time, Jove,
And every god, — none did refuse;
And be sure at last came Love,
And after Love, the Muse.
Keen ears can catch a syllable,
As if one spake to another,
In the hemlocks tall, untamable,
And what the whispering grasses smother.
[198]
AS • A • SHADOW • SUCH • IS • LIFE
/Eolian harps in the pine
Ring with the song of the Fates;
Infant Bacchus in the vine, —
For distant yet his chorus waits.
Canst thou copy in verse one chime
Of the wood-bell's peal and cry,
Write in a book the morning's prime,
Or match with words that tender sky?
Wonderful verse of the gods,
Of one import, of varied tone;
They chant the bliss of their abodes
To man imprisoned in his own.
Ever the words of the gods resound ;
But the porches of man's ear
Seldom in this low life's round
Are unsealed, that he may hear.
Wandering voices in the air
And murmurs in the wold
Speak what I cannot declare,
Yet cannot all withhold.
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
When the shadow fell on the lake,
The whirlwind in ripples wrote
Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,
And omens above thought.
But the meanings cleave to the lake,
Cannot be carried in book or urn ;
Go thy ways now, come later back,
On waves and hedges still they burn.
These the fates of men forecast,
Of better men than live to-day;
If who can read them comes at last
He will spell in the sculpture, " Stay."
R. W. EMERSON.
My Garden.
A Ballad of White Maidens
As I walked in the moonlight, a garden I found
By strange sorcery wrought all about and
around ;
When the voices are muffled, the vistas are
blurr'd,
[200]
DUM • VIVIMUS • VIVAMUS
Dense incense makes faint the indicible word,
Folding round broider'd vestments and far flash-
ing gems
Of pontiff's tiaras and kings diadems.
The cups of the tall-springing lilies confuse
With white maidens' faces moist-eyed, while the
dews
Shine ghostlike and pallid on mist-breathing
grass,
Where pearl-sprinkled sandals fall light as they
pass ;
The maid's trailing garments glide over and raise
Such light stir as June in her slumberous days
Permits to low zephyrs with pauses between
Lest they wanton too long with the leaf's silver
sheen ;
The cooing dove murmurs in languorous elms
Of the dream and the dreamer in reverie's
realms.
O willow-sweet maidens! What maidens are
these,
Curd-white in the moonlight and honey-lipp'd
breeze ?
Old voices grow faint, from the summit they fall,
Your measures enchant me, I come at your call.
[20i]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
0 faint grow the tocsin, the trumpet, the drum!
Enswathe me, enfold me ; white maidens, I come !
Ah, stay me with lilies, sweet press of your faces,
The nearness and warmth of your mystic em-
braces,
Dissolving the lonely inviolate state
Which I shared with the dwellers outside of
your gate!
By a superincession fantastical, sweet,
1 am merged in the maids of this shadow'd re-
treat ;
They are I, I am they, neither many nor one,
As the light and the warmth from the fount of
the sun.
Within the charm'd walls is a place of delight,
And a world from its windows shines strange to
the sight,
With the pomp of the night and the glory of day
Where the long golden prospects stretch shining
away.
With pennons and banners the pageants pass by,
And the crash of their music goes up to the sky;
The centre and shrine is the paradise fair
And crown'd 'midst his maidens the monarch is
there.
[202]
LIGHT • IS • THE • PARENT • OF • LIFE U
O wrapp'd all about by the ministry blest
And the intimate sense of the garden of rest,
How vague are the legends, the memories dim
Of the King's distant country surviving for him !
But a hint in the stars, but a voice in the wind,
An echo of canticles lost to the mind,
Welling up from the depths in the sea's organ
voice,
Bear witness how far he has err'd in his choice.
In the garden are stairways and turrets and
towers ;
'Twas spring when He enter'd, and sweet were
the flowers;
The maidens sang ballads, how blithe to the
heart !
All bells rang the nuptials of Nature and Art,
And the world to the walls in high carnival came,
Bright eyes full of rapture, bright faces aflame;
But what of that moaning when music is still'd?
That ache in the pause which no pageant has
fill'd?
The garden has hill-tops, the stars live above;
It is summertide now and the world is all love;
The maids in full chorus sing jubilant odes,
A glory abides in the vistas and roads.
[203]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
O high the emprizes and high the renown,
And the King hath his maidens, the King hath
his crown !
But what of the whispers which hint in his
sleep ?
Do hearts never sorrow? Do eyes never weep?
The garden has sycamores stately and old;
O the time is rich autumn, the leaves are all
gold,
Round maids in the moonlight, high-seeming and
soft,
But a mist looking mournful envelops them oft;
With a voice full of loss falls the wave on the
strand ;
Lone horsemen ride hurriedly far through the
land;
Cold sleet against windows beats heavy and
drives
On the overblown blooms and the bees' ravish'd
hives.
All voice in that garden dies down in a dirge,
And the King hath his sorrow to crown him
and scourge.
Far, far through the windows his vision is
strain'd,
[204]
tT I • STAND • ON • EARTH t!T
The young have grown old, and the old have
not gain'd
Save in sense of illusion and measureless loss;
As the weary wayfarer goes dragging his cross
O'er the stones of the road to the hills out of
reach,
Where storms utter faintly their ominous speech ;
'Mid the ghosts of the maidens, ah, vain let him
roam,
And remember at last how he stray'd from his
home!
Deep frost in the garden, the maidens are dead,
The King is a-cold with the snows on his head ;
Through the rime on the windows forth-looking
sees he
The dearth and the dark where the glory should
be.
Where now are the stars and the altitude keen,
All the music of old in the shining demesne,
The fellowship lofty reserved to adorn
That secret pageant and state inborn?
The heart cannot dream it though hearts may
yearn,
Nor the way of attainment the eye discern,
But the King in the garden, of all bereft,
[205]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Knows that which was priceless for this was left,
For a paradise fated with time to end,
The place of the Vision whence Kings descend;
And over the desolate, lonely road
Dim eyes put forth from his waste abode,
To watch for a herald with tidings sent
From the land withdrawn of the soul's content,
For a beacon speaking the darkness through
Of the light beyond and the further blue,
Past all sea-cries for a distant tone
From the royal realm which was once his own.
When will it come to him? Comes it now?
Falls there a gleam on his clouded brow?
The wasting garden is moist and wan,
Far has the King of the Garden gone!
Whither he travels and what may chance —
Whether restored from the life-long trance,
Whether to tarry in exile far
Where other illusive gardens are —
Who shall acquaint us? He that knows
The one true place for a King's repose,
And, long though he travel the outward track,
That the King came forth and the King goes
back. ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE.
(A Book of Mystery and Vision.}
[206]
TIME • THE • FATHER • OF • TRUTH
Jam Noli Tardare
Undeterminted starry spaces,
Fill with joy your paths unknown!
But to watch the inward graces
Needs the inward sight alone;
Meanest places hold the spell
Of unfathomed miracle.
Hence when any hour invites you,
Whether seemly eve's repose,
Or, if better this delights you,
Night august or hush'd moon-close;
Best when best your charm is found —
Pass into your garden ground.
There a sadden sense supernal
On the mind prepared shall fall,
As of haunted thought eternal
And great strangeness vesting all;
Grass and glebe and grave expound
Thin veil'd secrets latent round.
Not in bowers of roses solely
Shall the wondrous tale be told,
[207]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
But plantations meek and lowly,
Beds of burning marigold;
Yet betwixt the lilies straight
Swings the visionary gate.
Not devoid of dream if blended
Are the windflowers and the docks,
For myself I love a splendid
Place of purple hollyhocks,
And my fancy knows the powers
Which lie rich in the sunflowers.
I could set you in my closes,
With the seeing sense endow'd,
Where the weed is as the rose is,
And the bird's lilt, low or loud,
Outward voices, clear and strong,
Worlds of rapture, worlds of song.
But for you a place of wonder
Your own garden ground must be;
'Twixt the trees that you stand under,
Seeing what is yours to see,
In my garden seen aright
All is scarlet and white light.
• • • • •
[208]
MAN • PROPOSES • GOD • DISPOSES
White the Word of Words reposes
Far beyond the lip's control,
Till the fitting time discloses,
In the garden of the soul,
Let us dreamers day by day
In the outward gardens pray.
ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE.
A Book of Mystery and Vision.
I know,
When the shadows lie so rich, so slant, so long
Over the close-cropp'd lawn which else is
white with dew,
Where the misty vistas shine, and the wind-
ing path go through
To thickets beyond the garden ground and a
secret bird in song;
The darkling orbs of the sunflowers, splen-
didly tall,
Droop in the moon-mist nimbus, dim with
a hollowing tinge,
While from their palm-like leaves the thick
dews trickle and fall,
[209]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
And the musk-rich scents of the garden rise
To the overshadowing fringe
Of their gorgeous golden eyes.
I know,
When at last the uttermost stillness steeps
Rose and lily, and laurel and lilac hedge;
The leaf does not stir on the willow, nor the
leaf where the ash-tree weeps,
The topmost twig of the yew and the cypress
sleeps
Like the box of the garden edge;
When great, divine, serene,
Flowing from vales beyond, and yet beyond
from the hills,
The sense magnetic of expectation fills
The palaces sacramental and high-roof'd halls
In the haunted place of incense, the wondrous
place
Earth and its crown between,
With an unvoiced solemn promise of bound-
less grace,
As over the East's red ramparts, gateways and
cloudy walls,
And over a thousand changeful turrets and
towers,
[210]
THY • DAYS • PASS
The morning glory of heaven blooms over and
calls
The morning glories of earth in a thousand
bowers.
ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE.
A Book of Mystery and Vision.
Vly Garden
A Garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Ferned grot —
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not —
Not God ! in gardens ! when the eve is cool !
Nay, but I have a sign;
'Tis very sure God walks in mine.
T. E. BROWN.
[211]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
A garden shut up is my sister, my bride,
A spring shut up,
A fountain sealed.
Thy shoots are an orchard of pomegranates,
With precious fruits;
Henna with spikenard plants,
Spikenard and saffron,
Calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frank-
incense,
Myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices.
Thou art a fountain of gardens,
A well of living waters,
And flowing streams from Lebanon.
Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south;
Blow upon my garden,
That the spices thereof may flow out.
Let my beloved come into his garden,
And eat his precious fruits.
I am come into my garden, my sister, my bride ;
I have gathered my myrrh with my spice;
I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey;
I have drunk my wine with my milk.
• • • • •
[212]
OUR • TIMES • AT • HAND
My beloved is gone down to his garden,
To the bed of spices,
To feed in the gardens,
And to gather lilies.
I went down into the garden of nuts,
To see the green plants of the valley,
To see whether the vine budded,
And the pomegranates were in flower.
Or ever I was aware, my soul set me
Among the chariots of my princely people.
Solomon's Song of Songs.
The Bower
From the place I stood in, floated
Back the covert din and close,
And the open ground was coated
Carpet-smooth with grass and moss,
And the blue-bells' purple presence signed
worthily across.
Here a linden-tree stood, bright'ning
All adown its silver rind;
[213]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
For as some trees draw the lightning,
So this tree, unto my mind,
Drew to earth the blessed sunshine from the sky
where it was shrined.
Tall the linden-tree and near it,
An old hawthorn also grew;
And wood-ivy like a spirit
Hovered dimly round the two,
Shaping thence that bower of beauty which I
sing of thus to you.
'Twas a bower for garden fitter
Than for any woodland wide;
Though a fresh and dewy glitter
Struck it through from side to side,
Shaped and shaven was the freshness, as by gar-
den-cunning plied.
Oh, a lady might have come there,
Hooded fairly like her hawk,
With a book or lute in summer,
And a hope of sweeter talk, —
Listening less to her own music than for foot-
steps on the walk!
[214]
tT EITHER • LEARN • OR • GO tT
But that bower appeared a marvel
In the wildness of the place;
With such seeming art and travail,
Dimly fixed and filled was
Leaf to leaf, the dark green ivy, to the summit
from the base.
And the ivy veined and glossy
Was enwrought with eglantine;
And like wild hop fibred closely,
And the large-leaved columbine,
Arch of door and window-mullion, did right
sylvanly entwine.
Rose-tree either side the door were
Growing lithe and growing tall,
Each one set a summer warder
For the keeping of the hall, —
With a red rose and a white rose, leaning, nod-
ding at the wall.
As I entered, mosses hushing
Stole all noises from my foot;
And a green elastic cushion,
[215]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Clasped within the linden's root,
Took me in a chair of silence very rare and ab-
solute.
All the floor was paved with glory,
Greenily, silently inlaid
(Through quick motions made before me)
With fair counterparts in shade
Of the fair serrated ivy-leaves which slanted
overhead.
" Is such pavement in a palace? "
So I questioned in my thought:
The sun, shining through the chalice
Of the red rose hung without,
Threw within a red libation, like an answer to
my doubt.
At the same time, on the linen
Of my childish lap there fell
Two white May-leaves, downward winning
Through the ceiling's miracle,
From a blossom, like an angel, but of sight yet
blessing well.
[216]
tT NEVER -TO-BE • RECALLED tT
Down to floor and up to ceiling
Quick I turned my childish face,
With an innocent appealing
For the secret of the place,
To the trees which surely knew it in partaking
of the grace.
Where's no foot of human creature
How could reach a human hand?
And if this be work of Nature,
Why has Nature, turned so bland,
Breaking off from other wild work? It was
hard to understand.
Was she weary of rough-doing,
Of the bramble and the thorn?
Did she pause in tender rueing
Her of all her sylvan scorn?
Or in mock of Art's deceiving was the sudden
mildness worn?
Or could this same bower (I fancied)
Be the work of Dryad strong,
Who, surviving all that chanced
[217]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
In the world's pagan wrong,
Lay hid, feeding in the woodland on the last
true poet's song?
Or was this the house of fairies,
Left, because of the rough ways,
Unassailed by Ave Marys
Which the passing pilgrim prays,
And beyond St. Catherine's chiming on the
blessed Sabbath days?
Oh, the golden-hearted daisies
Witnessed there, before my youth,
To the truth of things, with praises
Of the beauty of the truth;
And I awoke to Nature's real, laughing joyfully
for both.
And I said within me, laughing,
I have found a bower to-day,
A green lusus, fashioned half in
Chance and half in Nature's play,
And a little bird sings nigh it, I will never more
mis-say.
[218]
AS • THE • SHADE • IS • SO • IS • LIFE
Henceforth, I will be the fairy,
Of this bower not built by one ;
I will go then, sad or merry,
With each morning's benison,
And the bird shall be my harper in the dream-
hall I have won.
By this couch I weakly lie on,
While I count my memories, —
Through the fingers which, still sighing,
I press closely on mine eyes, —
Clear as once beneath the sunshine, I beheld the
bower arise.
Springs the linden-tree as greenly,
Stroked with light adown its rind;
And the ivy-leaves serenely
Each in either intertwined;
And the rose trees at the doorway, they have
neither grown nor pined.
From those overblown faint roses
Not a leaf appeareth shed,
And that little bud discloses
[219]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Not a thorn's-breadth more of red,
For the winters and the summers which have
passed me overhead.
And that music overfloweth,
Sudden sweet, the sylvan eaves:
Thrush or nightingale — who knoweth?
Fay or faunus — who believes?
But my heart still trembles in me to the trem-
bling of the leaves.
Is the bower lost then? who sayeth
That the bower indeed is lost?
Hark! my spirit in it prayeth
Through the sunshine and the frost, —
And the prayer preserves it greenly, to the last
and uttermost.
E. B. BROWNING.
The Lost Bower.
[220]
TIME • BRINGS • TRUTH • TO • LIGHT
The Trees of the Garden
Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; and
ye
Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease
to know
And still stand silent: — is it all a show —
A wisp that laughs upon the wall ? — decree
Of some inexorable supremacy
Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise
From depth to ominous depth, looks past his
eyes,
Sphinx- faced with unabashed augury?
Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke
The storm-felled forest trees moss-grown to-
day
Whose roots are hillocks where the children
play;
Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke
Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering
gems, shall wage
Their journey still when his boughs shrink
with age. „ ~ „
D. G. ROSSETTI.
(The House of Life.)
[221]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS U
A Forsaken Garden
In a coign of the cliff between lowland and
highland,
At the sea-down's edge between windward
and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inward island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the
graves of its roses
Now lie dead.
Not a flower to be prest at the foot that falls not ;
As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are
dry;
From the thicket of thorns whence the night-
ingale calls not,
Could she call, there were never a rose to
reply.
Over the meadows that blossom and wither,
Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song.
Only the sun and the rain come hither
All year long.
[222]
PAX • OPTIMA • RERUM
The sun burns scar and the rain dishevels
One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.
Only the wind here hovers and revels
In a round where life seems barren as death.
Here there was laughing of old, there was weep-
ing,
Haply, of lovers none ever will know,
Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping
Years ago.
All are at one now, roses and lovers,
Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the
sea.
Not a breath of the time that has been hovers
In the air now soft with a summer to be.
Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons
hereafter
Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now
or weep,
When as they that are free now of weeping and
laughter
We shall sleep.
A. C. SWINBURNE.
(Poems and Ballads.)
[223]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Paradise
Once in a dream I saw the flowers
That bud and bloom in Paradise;
More fair they are than waking eyes
Have seen in all this world of ours,
And faint the perfume bearing rose,
And faint the lily on its stem,
And faint the perfect violet,
Compared with them.
I heard the songs of Paradise;
Each bird sat singing in its place;
A tender song so full of grace
It soared like incense to the skies.
Each bird sat singing to its mate
Soft cooing notes among the trees:
The nightingale herself were cold
To such as these.
I saw the fourfold River flow,
And deep it was, with golden sand;
It flowed between a mossy land
With murmured music grave and low.
[224]
MAKE • HASTE • SLOWLY
It hath refreshment for all thirst,
For fainting spirit strength and rest;
Earth holds not such a draught as this
From east to west.
The Tree of Life stood budding there,
Abundant with its twelvefold fruits;
Eternal sap sustains its roots,
Its shadowing branches fill the air.
Its leavings are healing for the world,
Its fruit the hungry world can feed,
Sweeter than honey to the taste
And balm indeed.
I saw the Gate called Beautiful;
And looked, but scarce could look within;
I saw the golden streets begin,
And outskirts of the glassy pool.
Oh harps, oh crowns of plenteous stars,
Oh green palm branches, many-leaved —
Eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard,
Nor heart conceived.
I hope to see these things again,
But not as once in dreams by night;
[225]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
To see them with my very sight,
And touch and handle and attain:
To have all heaven beneath my feet
For narrow way that once they trod;
To have my part with all the saints,
And with my God.
CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
Garden Fairies
Keen was the air, the sky was very light,
Soft with shed snow my garden was, and white,
And walking there, I heard upon the night
Sudden sound of little voices,
Just the prettiest of noises.
It was the strangest, subtlest, sweetest sound:
It seem'd above me, seem'd upon the ground.
Then swiftly seem'd to eddy round and round,
Till I said : " To-night the air is
Surely full of garden fairies."
And all at once it seem'd I grew aware
That little, shining presences were there, —
[226]
U I • SET • TO • RISE • AGAIN U
White shapes and red shapes danced upon the air ;
Then a peal of silver laughter,
And such singing followed after.
As none of you, I think, has ever heard.
More soft it was than call of any bird.
Note after note, exquisitely deferr'd,
Soft as dew drops when they settle
In a fair flower's open petal.
"What are these fairies?" to myself I said;
For answer, then, as from a garden's bed,
On the cold air a sudden scent was shed,
Scent of lilies, scent of roses,
Scent of summer's sweetest posies.
And said a small, sweet voice within my ear:
" We flowers, that sleep through winter, once
a year
Are by our flower queen sent to visit here,
That this fact may duly flout us, —
Gardens can look fair without us.
" A very little time we have to play,
Then must we go, oh, very far away,
[227]
U IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS U
And sleep again for many a long, long day,
Till the glad birds sing above us,
And the warm sun comes to love us.
" Hark, what the roses sing now, as we go " ;
Then very sweet and soft, and very low, —
A dream of sound across the garden snow, —
Come the chime of roses singing
To the lily-bells' faint ringing.
ROSE s SONG
" Softly sinking through the snow, •
To our winter rest we go,
Underneath the snow to house
Till the birds be in the boughs,
And the boughs with leaves be fair,
And the sunshine everywhere.
Softly through the snow we settle,
Little snow drops press each petal.
Oh, the snow is kind and white, —
Soft it is, and very light;
Soon we shall be where no light is,
But where sleep is, and where night is,-
[228]
I • MOVE • AND • WARN
Sleep of every kind unshaken,
Till our summer bids us waken."
Then toward some far-off goal that singing
drew;
Then altogether cried ; more steely blue
The blue star shone; but in my spirit grew
Hope of Summer, love of Roses,
Certainty that Sorrow closes.
PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON.
To a Garden
Oh, happy Eden! where I roam'd of yore
In that sweet innocence I long for now, —
No childish innocence of fruited bough,
For I had bit my apple to the core,
But when the golden fruit seem'd doubly sweet,
(Unlike the tempter of a bygone day),
A serpent came, and bade me fling away
What once he bade those first poor lovers eat.
[229]
IN • PRAISE • OF • GARDENS
Oh, had I never bent that magic bough,
And tasted of the sweetness that it bore,
My heart had been as careless as before,
And all these bitter tears unfailing now!
I curse the cruel hand that pointed where
My golden apple show'd a bitter flaw,
And his malignant eye, who smiled and saw
My best illusions melting into air!
But garden — garden where I used to rove,
I bless thy orange groves and sunny sky,
I bless thy feath'ry palm — trees tow'ring high,
That overshadow'd what seem'd then my love!
VIOLET FANE.
LET • OTHERS • TELL • OF • STORMS • AND •
• SHOWERS •
I'LL • ONLY - COUNT • YOUR SUNNY HOURS
[230]
INDEX
Across the Convent garden walls (Mathilde Blind),
159-
Across my Garden! and the thicket stirs (Tenny-
son), 119.
A Garden bower'd close (Tennyson), 171.
A Garden shut up is my sister, my bride (The Bible
— Song of Songs), 213.
A Garden Song (Austin Dobson), 177.
Akerman (William), Dost thou remember how one
morn of Spring, 100.
Akerman (William), The Garden walks are wet
with dew, 137.
An Autumn Garden (Bliss Carman), 143.
And the Lord God Planted a Garden (The Bible),
183.
An Eastern City's Garden (Tennyson), 158.
An October Garden (P. B. Marston), 175.
Anonymous, If they to whom God gives fair gardens
knew, 36.
Anonymous, The bee through flowery gardens goes,
46.
Anonymous, Void Notre Heure, 65.
Autumn Tints (Mathilde Blind), 137.
Ballad of White Maidens (A. E. Waite), 200.
Bee, The, Through flowery gardens goes, 46.
[231]
INDEX
Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers (Brown-
ing— Sonnets from the Portuguese), 81.
Benson (A. C.), In a College Garden, 162.
Bible, And the Lord Planted a Garden, 183.
Blind (Mathilde), A Garden in Spring, 58.
Autumn Tints, 137.
Across the Convent Garden Walls, 159.
He passed the garden where, snow-white and
red, 1 60.
I planted a rose-tree in my garden, 160.
In a Kentish Rose Garden, 176.
Bosworth (W.), Love in the Garden, 76.
Bower, The Lost (E. B. Browning), 213.
Bridges (Robert), The Garden in September, 134.
The pinks along my garden walks, 136.
Brown (T. E.), My Garden, 211.
Browning (E. B.), Beloved, thou hast brought me
many flowers (Sonnets from the Portuguese), 81.
Hector in the Garden, 120.
The Lost Bower, 213.
Browning (R.)» The Flower's Name (Garden Fan-
cies), 82.
But I know where a Garden Grows (Tennyson), 159.
Campion (Thomas), Cherry Ripe, 75.
Carman (Bliss), An Autumn Garden, 143.
Cavendish, My Garden sweet, enclosed with walles
strong, 36.
Chaucer (Geoffrey), The Franklin's Tale, 24.
The Romaunt of the Rose, 25.
The Parlement of Foules, 29.
[232]
INDEX
Chaucer (Geoffrey), The Merchant's Tale, 67.
When almost ended was the month of May,
167.
Cherry Ripe (Campion), 75.
Chorl and the Birde, The (John Lydgate), 107.
Come into the Garden, Maud! (Tennyson), 85.
Contemplation upon Flowers (Henry King), 186.
Cook (Eliza), Early Influence of Gardens remains
Always, 122.
Corymbus for Autumn, A (Francis Thompson), 59.
Cowley (A.), Underneath this myrtle shade, 43.
The Wish, 44.
Spring in a Garden, 78.
A Wish, 109.
Cowper (William), The Garden, 113.
Custance (Olive), The Parting Hour, 100.
Dobson (Austin), A Song of Angiola in Heaven, 56.
A Garden Song, 177.
Dost thou remember how one morn of Spring (W.
Akerman), 100.
Dowson (Ernest), The Garden of Shadow, 97.
Yvonne of Brittany, 98.
Early Influence of Gardens remains Always (Eliza
Cook), 122.
Emerson (R. W.), My Garden, 197.
Faerie Queene, The (Book II, Canto xii), (E. Spen-
ser), 31.
Fane (Violet), Love in a Garden, 94.
[233]
INDEX
Fane (Violet), In Green Old Gardens, 171.
To a Garden, 229.
Farewell, A (W. Wordsworth), 117.
FitzGerald (Edward), In a Persian Garden, 53.
Flos Florum (George Wither), 36.
Flower Garden, A (Wordsworth), 167.
Flower, The (George Herbert), 184.
Flower's Name, The (Browning — Garden Fancies'),
82.
Franklin's Tale, The (Chaucer), 24.
From House to Home (C. G. Rossetti), 133.
Fugitive Glory, The (Neihardt), 61.
Garden of Flowers, A (James Thomson), 112.
Garden, The (Marvell), 40.
(William Cowper), 113.
(Alexander Pope), 115.
Garden in September, The (R. Bridges), 134.
Garden, The, walks are wet with dew (Akerman),
137-
Garden Faeries (P. B. Marston), 226.
Garden of Adonis, The (Spenser), 69.
Garden Lyric (F. Locker), 92.
Garden of Alcinoiis, The (Homer), 23.
Garden of Eden (John Milton), 187.
Garden of Prosperina, The (Spenser), 67.
Garden of Shadow (Ernest Dowson), 97.
Garden in Spring (Mathilde Blind), 58.
Garden Thoughts (James Montgomery), 191.
Gascoigne (George), Lines written on a Garden Seat,
it*
[234]
INDEX
Gilbert (W. S.), Only Roses, 161.
Grecian Garden, A (Theocritus — Lang), 66.
Groves of Blarney, The (Milliken), 49.
Happy Swain, The (Philips), 46.
Hark! Hark! the lark at Heaven's gate sings, 34.
Hector in the Garden (E. B. Browning), 120.
He passed the garden where, snow-white and red
(Mathilde Blind), 160.
Herbert (George), The Flower, 184.
Homer, The Garden of Alcinoiis (The Odyssey, Book
VII), 23.
Hope (Laurence), The Orange Garden, 102.
If they to whom God gives fair gardens knew, 36.
I have a Garden of my own (Thomas Moore), 148.
I know, where the shadows lie so rich (A. E. Waite),
209.
llle Terrarum (R. L. Stevenson), 124.
In a Bower (A. O'Shaughnessy), 90.
In a College Garden (A. C. Benson), 162.
In Eastern Lands they talk in flowers (Percival), 91.
In a Kentish Rose Garden (Mathilde Blind), 176.
In a Persian Garden (FitzGerald), 53.
In Green Old Gardens (Violet Fane), 171.
In Springtime (R. Kipling), 140.
I planted a rose-tree in my garden (Mathilde Blind),
1 60.
Jam Noli Tardare (A. E. Waite), 207.
January and May (Pope), 81.
Jonson (Ben), The Shepherd's Holyday, 35.
[235]
INDEX
King (Henry), A Contemplation upon Flowers, 186.
Kipling (Rudyard), In Springtime, 140.
Lang (Andrew), A Song of Phaacia, 54.
One Flower, 95.
Lines written on a Garden Seat (G. Gascoigne), 183.
Little, The, Window looks upon the East (Stuart-
Mentieth), 138.
Locker (Frederick), A Garden Lyric, 92.
Love in a Garden (Violet Fane), 94.
Love in the Garden (Bosworth), 76.
Lydgate (John), The Chorl and the Birde, 107.
Marston (Philip Bourke), An October Garden, 175.
Garden Faeries, 226.
Marvell (Andrew), The Nymph Complaining for the
Death of Her Fawn, 39.
The Garden, 40.
The Mower against Gardens, no.
Merchant's Tale, The (Chaucer), 67.
Meynell (Alice), My Heart Shall be thy Garden, 96.
Midges Dance Aboon the Burn, The (Tannahill), 48.
Milliken (R. A.), The Groves of Blarney, 49.
Milton (John), The Garden of Eden, 187.
Montgomery (James), Garden Thoughts, 191.
Moore (Thomas), I have a Garden of ray own, 148.
Morris (William), The Nymph's Song to Hylas, 89.
Moss-Rose, The (Henry Newbolt), 163.
Mower against Gardens, The (A. Marvell), no.
My Garden (Emerson), 197.
My Garden (T. E. Brown), 211.
[236]
INDEX
My Garden Sweet, enclosed with walles strong
(Chaucer), 36.
My Heart Shall be thy Garden (Alice Meynell), 96.
Neihardt (J. G.), The Fugitive Glory, 61.
Newbolt (Henry), The Moss-Rose, 163.
Night and Day (R. L. Stevenson), 131.
Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite (Tennyson),
170.
November's sky is chill and drear (Scott), 119.
Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn (A.
Marvell), 39.
Nymph's Song to Hylas (W. Morris), 89.
Omar Khayyam, In a Persian Garden (FitzGerald),
S3-
One Flower (Andrew Lang), 95.
Only Roses (W. S. Gilbert), 161.
Orange Garden, The (Laurence Hope), 102.
O'Shaughnessy (A.), In a Bower, 90.
Paradise (C. G. Rossetti), 224.
Parlement of Foules (Chaucer), 29.
Parting Hour, The (Olive Custance), 100.
Percival, In Eastern Lands they talk in flowers, 91.
Philips (A.), The Happy Swain, 46.
Pinks, The, along my garden walks (R. Bridges), 136.
Pope (A.), January and May, 81.
The Garden, 115.
The Tasteless Garden, 147.
[237]
jy INDEX
Romaunt of the Rose, The (Chaucer), 25.
Rossetti (D. G.), The Trees of the Garden, 221.
Rossetti (C. G.), From House to Home, 133.
Shut Out, 171.
Paradise, 224.
Ruines of Time, The (Spenser), 30.
Scott (Sir. W.), November's sky is chill and drear,
(Marmion), 119.
Sensitive Plant, The (P. B. Shelley), 153.
Shakespeare (W.), Where the Bee Sucks, 33.
Hark, Hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
34-
Under the Greenwood Tree, 34.
Shelley (P. B.), The Sensitive Plant, 153.
Shepherd's Holy day, The, 35.
Shut Out (C. G. Rossetti), 173.
Solomon (King), A garden shut up is my sister, my
bride, 213.
Song of Angiola in Heaven (A. Dobson), 56.
Song of Phaacia (Andrew Lang), 54.
So white with frost my garden lies (R. M. Watson),
142.
Spenser (Edmund), The Ruines of Time, 30.
The Faerie Queene (Book II, Canto xii), 31.
The Garden of Proserpina (Faerie Queene),
67.
The Garden of Adonis (Faerie Queene), 69.
To the gay gardins his unstaid desire (Muio-
potmos), 107.
Spring in a Garden (Cowley), 78.
[238]
INDEX
Stood the House where I was born (A. E. Waite),
139-
Stevenson (R. L.), Hie Terrarum, 124.
To a Garden, 128.
The Sun's Travels, 129.
Night and Day, 131.
Stuart-Menteith (Dora), The little window looks
upon the East, 138.
Sun's Travels, The (R. L. Stevenson), 129.
Swinburne (A. C.), The Forsaken Garden, 222.
Tannahill (R.), The Midges Dance Aboon the Burn,
48.
Tasteless Garden, The (A. Pope), 147.
Tennyson (A.), Come into the Garden, Maud! 85.
Across my Garden! and the thicket stirs, 119.
An Eastern City's Garden, 158.
But I Know where a Garden Grows, 159.
Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite, 170.
A Garden bower'd close, 171.
The Forsaken Garden (A. C. Swinburne), 222.
Theocritus, A Grecian Garden (Lang), 66.
The Spirit of all Gardens (Francis Thompson), 178.
The Trees of the Garden (D. G. Rossetti), 221.
Thomson (James), A Garden of Flowers, 112.
Thompson (Francis), A Corymbus for Autumn, 59.
The Spirit of all Gardens, 178.
To a Garden (R. L. Stevenson), 128.
To a Garden (Violet Fane), 229.
To the gay gardins his unstaid desire (Spenser. —
Muiopotmos), 107.
[239]
INDEX
Underneath this Myrtle Shade (Cowley), 93.
Under the Greenwood Tree (Shakespeare), 34.
Void Notre Heure (Anon.), 65.
Vestured and veiled with twilight (R. M. Watson),
141.
Waite (Arthur E.), Stood the house where I was born,
139.
A Ballad of White Maidens, 200.
Jam Noli Tardare, 207.
I Know where the Shadows lie so rich, 209.
Watson (Rosamund M.), Vestured and veiled with
twilight, 141.
So white with frost my garden lies, 142.
When Almost Ended was the month of May (Chau-
cer), 167.
When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd (Whit-
man), 192,
Where the Bee Sucks (Shakespeare), 33.
Whitman (Walt.), When lilacs last in the doer-yard
bloom'd, 192.
Wish, A (A. Cowley), 109.
Wish, The (Cowley), 44.
With deep devotion, Nature, did I feel (Words-
worth, The Prelude), 51.
Wither (George), Flos Florum, 36.
Wordsworth (W.), With deep devotion, Nature, did
I feel (The Prelude), 51.
A Fareivell, 117.
A Floiver Garden, 167.
Yvonne of Brittany (Ernest Dawson), 98.
[240]
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