LINES TO A LADY,
WHO PRESENTED THE AUTHOR WITH SOME ENGLISH FRUITS AND FLOWERS.
Green herbs and gushing springs in some hot waste
Though, grateful to the traveller's sight and taste,
Seem far less sweet and fair than fruits and flowers
That breathe, in foreign lands, of English bowers.
Thy gracious gift, dear lady, well recalls
Sweet scenes of home,--the white cot's trellised walls--
The trim red garden path--the rustic seat--
The jasmine-covered arbour, fit retreat
For hearts that love repose. Each spot displays
Some long-remembered charm. In sweet amaze
I feel as one who from a weary dream
Of exile wakes, and sees the morning beam
Illume the glorious clouds of every hue
That float o'er scenes his happy childhood knew.
How small a spark may kindle fancy's flame
And light up all the past! The very same
Glad sounds and sights that charmed my heart of old
Arrest me now--I hear them and behold.
Ah! yonder is the happy circle seated
Within, the favorite bower! I am greeted
With joyous shouts; my rosy boys have heard
A father's voice--their little hearts are stirred
With eager hope of some new toy or treat
And on they rush, with never-resting feet!
Gone is the sweet illusion--like a scene
Formed by the western vapors, when between
The dusky earth, and day's departing light
The curtain falls of India's sudden night.
D.L.R.
The verdant carpet embroidered with little stars of gold and silver--the
short-grown, smooth, and close-woven, but most delicate and elastic
fresh sward--so soothing to the dazzled eye, so welcome to the wearied
limbs--so suggestive of innocent and happy thoughts,--so refreshing to
the freed visitor, long pent up in the smoky city--is surely no where to
be seen in such exquisite perfection as on the broad meadows and softly-
swelling hills of England. And perhaps in no country in the world could
pic-nic holiday-makers or playful children with more perfect security
of life and health stroll about or rest upon Earth's richly enamelled
floor from sunrise to sunset on a summer's day. No Englishman would dare
to stretch himself at full length and address himself to sleep upon an
Oriental meadow unless he were perfectly indifferent to life itself and
could see nothing terrible in the hostility of the deadliest reptiles.
When wading through the long grass and thick jungles of Bengal, he is
made to acknowledge the full force of the true and beautiful
expression--"In the midst of life we are in death." The British Indian
exile on his return home is delighted with the "sweet security" of his
native fields. He may then feel with Wordsworth how
Dear is the forest frowning o'er his head.
And dear the velvet greensward to his tread.
Or he may exclaim in the words of poor Keats--now slumbering under a
foreign turf--
Happy is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than her own.
It is a pleasing proof of the fine moral influence of natural scenery
that the most ceremonious strangers can hardly be long seated together
in the open air on the "velvet greensward" without casting off for a
while the cold formalities of artificial life, and becoming as frank and
social as ingenuous school-boys. Nature breathes peace and geniality
into almost every human heart.
"John Thelwall," says Coleridge, "had something very good about him. We
were sitting in a beautiful recess in the Quantocks when I said to him
'Citizen John, this is a fine place to talk treason in!' 'Nay, Citizen
Samuel,' replied he, 'it is rather a place to make us forget that there
is any necessity for treason!'"
Leigh Hunt, who always looks on nature with the eye of a true painter
and the imagination of a true poet, has represented with delightful
force and vividness some of those accidents of light and shade that
diversify an English meadow.
RAIN AND SUNSHINE IN MAY.
"Can any thing be more lovely, than the meadows between the rains of
May, when the sun smites them on the sudden like a painter, and they
laugh up at him, as if he had lighted a loving cheek!
I speak of a season when the returning threats of cold and the resisting
warmth of summer time, make robust mirth in the air; when the winds
imitate on a sudden the vehemence of winter; and silver-white clouds are
abrupt in their coming down and shadows on the grass chase one another,
panting, over the fields, like a pursuit of spirits. With undulating
necks they pant forward, like hounds or the leopard.
See! the cloud is after the light, gliding over the country like the
shadow of a god; and now the meadows are lit up here and there with
sunshine, as if the soul of Titian were standing in heaven, and playing
his fancies on them. Green are the trees in shadow; but the trees in the
sun how twenty-fold green they are--rich and variegated with gold!"
One of the many exquisite out-of-doors enjoyments for the observers of
nature, is the sight of an English harvest. How cheering it is to behold
the sickles flashing in the sun, as the reapers with well sinewed arm,
and with a sweeping movement, mow down the close-arrayed ranks of the
harvest field! What are "the rapture of the strife" and all the "pomp,
pride and circumstance of glorious war," that bring death to some and
agony and grief to others, compared with the green and golden trophies
of the honest Husbandman whose bloodless blade makes no wife a widow, no
child an orphan,--whose office is not to spread horror and desolation
through shrieking cities, but to multiply and distribute the riches of
nature over a smiling land.
But let us quit the open fields for a time, and turn again to the
flowery retreats of
Retired Leisure
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.
In all ages, in all countries, in all creeds, a garden is represented as
the scene not only of earthly but of celestial enjoyment. The ancients
had their Elysian Fields and the garden of the Hesperides, the Christian
has his Garden of Eden, the Mahommedan his Paradise of groves and
flowers and crystal fountains and black eyed Houries.
"God Almighty," says Lord Bacon, "first planted a garden; and indeed it
is the purest of all pleasures: it is the greatest refreshment to the
spirits of man." Bacon, though a utilitarian philosopher, was such a
lover of flowers that he was never satisfied unless he saw them in
almost every room of his house, and when he came to discourse of them in
his Essays, his thoughts involuntarily moved harmonious numbers. How
naturally the following prose sentence in Bacon's Essay on Gardens
almost resolves itself into verse.
"For the heath which was the first part of our plot, I wish it to be
framed as much as may be to a natural wildness. Trees I would have none
in it, but some thickets made only of sweet briar and honeysuckle, and
some wild vine amongst; and the ground set with violets, strawberries
and primroses; for these are sweet, and prosper in the shade."
"For the heath which was the third part of our plot--
I wish it to be framed
As much as may be to a natural wildness.
Trees I'd have none in't, but some thickets made
Only of sweet-briar and honey-suckle,
And some wild vine amongst; and the ground set
With violets, strawberries, and primroses;
For these are sweet and prosper in the shade."
It has been observed that the love of gardens is the only passion which
increases with age. It is generally the most indulged in the two
extremes of life. In middle age men are often too much involved in the
affairs of the busy world fully to appreciate the tranquil pleasures in
the gift of Flora. Flowers are the toys of the young and a source of the
sweetest and serenest enjoyments for the old. But there is no season of
life for which they are unfitted and of which they cannot increase the
charm.
"Give me," says the poet Rogers, "a garden well kept, however small, two
or three spreading trees and a mind at ease, and I defy the world." The
poet adds that he would not have his garden, too much extended. He seems
to think it possible to have too much of a good thing. "Three acres of
flowers and a regiment of gardeners," he says, "bring no more pleasure
than a sufficiency." "A hundred thousand roses," he adds, "which we look
at en masse, do not identify themselves in the same manner as even a
very small border; and hence, if the cottager's mind is properly
attuned, the little cottage-garden may give him more real delight than
belongs to the owner of a thousand acres." In a smaller garden "we
become acquainted, as it were," says the same poet, "and even form
friendships with, individual flowers." It is delightful to observe how
nature thus adjusts the inequalities of fortune and puts the poor man,
in point of innocent happiness, on a level with the rich. The man of the
most moderate means may cultivate many elegant tastes, and may have
flowers in his little garden that the greatest sovereign in the world
might enthusiastically admire. Flowers are never vulgar. A rose from a
peasant's patch of ground is as fresh and elegant and fragrant as if it
had been nurtured in a Royal parterre, and it would not be out of place
in the richest porcelain vase of the most aristocratical drawing-room in
Europe. The poor man's flower is a present for a princess, and of all
gifts it is the one least liable to be rejected even by the haughty. It
might he worn on the fair brow or bosom of Queen Victoria with a nobler
grace than the costliest or most elaborate production of the goldsmith
or the milliner.
The majority of mankind, in the most active spheres of life, have
moments in which they sigh for rural retirement, and seldom dream of
such a retreat without making a garden the leading charm of it. Sir
Henry Wotton says that Lord Bacon's garden was one of the best that he
had seen either at home or abroad. Evelyn, the author of "Sylva, or a
Discourse of Forest Trees," dwells with fond admiration, and a pleasing
egotism, on the charms of his own beautiful and highly cultivated estate
at Wooton in the county of Surrey. He tells us that the house is large
and ancient and is "sweetly environed with delicious streams and
venerable woods." "I will say nothing," he continues, "of the air,
because the pre-eminence is universally given to Surrey, the soil being
dry and sandy; but I should speak much of the gardens, fountains and
groves that adorn it, were they not generally known to be amongst the
most natural, and (till this later and universal luxury of the whole
nation, since abounding in such expenses) the most magnificent that
England afforded, and which indeed gave one of the first examples to
that elegancy, since so much in vogue and followed, for the managing of
their waters and other elegancies of that nature." Before he came into
the possession of his paternal estate he resided at Say's Court, near
Deptford, an estate which he possessed by purchase, and where he had a
superb holly hedge four hundred feet long, nine feet high and five feet
broad. Of this hedge, he was particularly proud, and he exultantly asks,
"Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the
kind?" When the Czar of Muscovy visited England in 1698 to instruct
himself in the art of ship-building, he had the use of Evelyn's house
and garden, at Say's Court, and while there did so much damage to the
latter that the owner loudly and bitterly complained. At last the
Government gave Evelyn £150 as an indemnification. Czar Peter's favorite
amusement was to ride in a wheel barrow through what its owner had once
called the "impregnable hedge of holly." Evelyn was passionately fond of
gardening. "The life and felicity of an excellent gardener," he
observes, "is preferable to all other diversions." His faith in the art
of Landscape-gardening was unwavering. It could remove mountains. Here
is an extract from his Diary.
"Gave his brother some directions about his garden" (at Wooton
Surrey), "which, he was desirous to put into some form, for
which he was to remove a mountain overgrown with large trees and
thickets and a moat within ten yards of the house."
No sooner said than done. His brother dug down the mountain and
"flinging it into a rapid stream (which carried away the sand) filled up
the moat and levelled that noble area where now the garden and fountain
is."
Though Evelyn dearly loved a garden, his chief delight was not in
flowers but in forest trees, and he was more anxious to improve the
growth of plants indigenous to the soil than to introduce exotics.[007]
Sir William Temple was so attached to his garden, that he left
directions in his will that his heart should be buried there. It was
enclosed in a silver box and placed under a sun-dial.
Dr. Thomson Reid, the eminent Scottish metaphysician, used to be found
working in his garden in his eighty-seventh year.
The name of Chatham is in the long list of eminent men who have enjoyed
a garden. We are told that "he loved the country: took peculiar pleasure
in gardening; and had an extremely happy taste in laying out grounds."
What a delightful thing it must have been for that great statesman, thus
to relieve his mind from the weight of public care in the midst of quiet
bowers planted and trained by his own hand!
Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, notices the attractions of a
garden as amongst the finest remedies for depression of the mind. I must
give the following extracts from his quaint but interesting pages.
"To see the pleasant fields, the crystal fountains,
And take the gentle air amongst the mountains.
"To walk amongst orchards, gardens, bowers, mounts, and arbours,
artificial wildernesses, green thickets, arches, groves, lawns,
rivulets, fountains, and such like pleasant places, (like that
Antiochian Daphne,) brooks, pools, fishponds, between wood and water, in
a fair meadow, by a river side, ubi variae avium cantationes, florum
colores, pratorum frutices, &c. to disport in some pleasant plain, or
park, run up a steep hill sometimes, or sit in a shady seat, must needs
be a delectable recreation. Hortus principis et domus ad delectationem
facta, cum sylvâ, monte et piscinâ, vulgò la montagna: the prince's
garden at Ferrara, Schottus highly magnifies, with the groves,
mountains, ponds, for a delectable prospect; he was much affected with
it; a Persian paradise, or pleasant park, could not be more delectable
in his sight. St. Bernard, in the description of his monastery, is
almost ravished with the pleasures of it. "A sick man (saith he) sits
upon a green bank, and when the dog-star parcheth the plains, and dries
up rivers, he lies in a shady bower," Fronde sub arborea ferventia
temperat astra, "and feeds his eyes with variety of objects, herbs,
trees, to comfort his misery; he receives many delightsome smells, and
fills his ears with that sweet and various harmony of birds; good God,
(saith he), what a company of pleasures hast thou made for man!"
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