THE GARDEN OF ALCINA.
'A more delightful place, wherever hurled,
Through the whole air, Rogero had not found;
And had he ranged the universal world,
Would not have seen a lovelier in his round,
Than that, where, wheeling wide, the courser furled
His spreading wings, and lighted on the ground
Mid cultivated plain, delicious hill,
Moist meadow, shady bank, and crystal rill;
'Small thickets, with the scented laurel gay,
Cedar, and orange, full of fruit and flower,
Myrtle and palm, with interwoven spray,
Pleached in mixed modes, all lovely, form a bower;
And, breaking with their shade the scorching ray,
Make a cool shelter from the noon-tide hour.
And nightingales among those branches wing
Their flight, and safely amorous descants sing.
'Amid red roses and white lilies there,
Which the soft breezes freshen as they fly,
Secure the cony haunts, and timid hare,
And stag, with branching forehead broad and high.
These, fearless of the hunter's dart or snare,
Feed at their ease, or ruminating lie;
While, swarming in those wilds, from tuft or steep,
Dun deer or nimble goat disporting leap.'
Rose's Orlando Furioso.
Spenser's description of the garden of Adonis is too long to give
entire, but I shall quote a few stanzas. The old story on which Spenser
founds his description is told with many variations of circumstance and
meaning; but we need not quit the pages of the Faerie Queene to lose
ourselves amidst obscure mythologies. We have too much of these indeed
even in Spenser's own version of the fable.
THE GARDEN OF ADONIS.
Great enimy to it, and all the rest
That in the Gardin of Adonis springs,
Is wicked Time; 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 wings
Beates downe both leaves and buds without regard,
Ne ever pitty may relent his malice hard.
But were it not that Time their troubler is,
All that in this delightful 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 fell rancor or fond gealosy.
Franckly each paramour his leman knowes,
Each bird his mate; ne any does envy
Their goodly meriment and gay felicity.
There is continual 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:
The whiles the ioyous birdes make their pastyme
Emongst the shady leaves, their sweet abode,
And their trew loves without suspition tell abrode.
Right in the middest of that Paradise
There stood a stately mount, on whose round top
A gloomy grove of mirtle trees did rise,
Whose shady boughes sharp steele did never lop,
Nor wicked beastes their tender buds did crop,
But like a girlond compasséd the hight,
And from their fruitfull sydes sweet gum did drop,
That all the ground, with pretious deaw bedight,
Threw forth most dainty odours and most sweet delight.
And in the thickest covert of that shade
There was a pleasaunt arber, not by art
But of the trees owne inclination made,
Which knitting their rancke braunches part to part,
With wanton yvie-twine entrayld athwart,
And eglantine and caprifole emong,
Fashioned above within their inmost part,
That neither Phoebus beams could through them throng,
Nor Aeolus sharp blast could worke them any wrong.
And all about grew every sort of flowre,
To which sad lovers were transformde of yore,
Fresh Hyacinthus, Phoebus paramoure
And dearest love;
Foolish Narcisse, that likes the watry shore;
Sad Amaranthus, made a flowre but late,
Sad Amaranthus, in whose purple gore
Me seemes I see Amintas wretched fate,
To whom sweet poet's verse hath given endlesse date.
Fairie Queene, Book III. Canto VI.
I must here give a few stanzas from Spenser's description of the Bower
of Bliss
In which whatever in this worldly state
Is sweet and pleasing unto living sense,
Or that may dayntiest fantasy aggrate
Was pouréd forth with pleantiful dispence.
The English poet in his Fairie Queene has borrowed a great deal from
Tasso and Ariosto, but generally speaking, his borrowings, like those of
most true poets, are improvements upon the original.
THE BOWER OF BLISS.
There the most daintie paradise on ground
Itself doth offer to his sober eye,
In which all pleasures plenteously abownd,
And none does others happinesse envye;
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 art, which all that wrought, appearéd in no place.
One would have thought, (so cunningly the rude[039]
And scornéd 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 diff'ring both in willes agreed in fine;
So all agreed, through sweete diversity,
This Gardin to adorn with all variety.
And in the midst of all a fountaine stood,
Of richest substance that on earth might bee,
So pure and shiny that the silver flood
Through every channel running one might see;
Most goodly it with curious ymageree
Was over-wrought, and shapes of naked boyes,
Of which some seemed with lively iollitee
To fly about, playing their wanton toyes,
Whylest others did themselves embay in liquid ioyes.
Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound,
Of all that mote delight a daintie eare,
Such as attonce might not on living ground,
Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere:
Right hard it was for wight which did it heare,
To read what manner musicke that mote bee;
For all that pleasing is to living eare
Was there consorted in one harmonee;
Birdes, voices, instruments, windes, waters all agree:
The ioyous birdes, shrouded in chearefull shade,
Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet;
Th' angelicall soft trembling voyces made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver-sounding instruments did meet
With the base murmure of the waters fall;
The waters fall with difference discreet,
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call;
The gentle warbling wind low answeréd to all.
The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto XII.
Every school-boy has heard of the gardens of the Hesperides. The story
is told in many different ways. According to some accounts, the
Hesperides, the daughters of Hesperus, were appointed to keep charge of
the tree of golden apples which Jupiter presented to Juno on their
wedding day. A hundred-headed dragon that never slept, (the offspring of
Typhon,) couched at the foot of the tree. It was one of the twelve
labors of Hercules to obtain possession of some of these apples. He slew
the dragon and gathered three golden apples. The gardens, according to
some authorities, were situated near Mount Atlas.
Shakespeare seems to have taken Hesperides to be the name of the
garden instead of that of its fair keepers. Even the learned Milton in
his Paradise Regained, (Book II) talks of the ladies of the
Hesperides, and appears to make the word Hesperides synonymous with
"Hesperian gardens." Bishop Newton, in a foot-note to the passage in
"Paradise Regained," asks, "What are the Hesperides famous for, but the
gardens and orchards which they had bearing golden fruit in the
western Isles of Africa." Perhaps after all there may be some good
authority in favor of extending the names of the nymphs to the garden
itself. Malone, while condemning Shakespeare's use of the words as
inaccurate, acknowledges that other poets have used it in the same way,
and quotes as an instance, the following lines from Robert Greene:--
Shew thee the tree, leaved with refined gold,
Whereon the fearful dragon held his seat,
That watched the garden called the Hesperides.
Robert Greene.
For valour is not love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Love's Labour Lost.
Before thee stands this fair Hesperides,
With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touched
For death-like dragons here affright thee hard.
Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Milton, after the fourth line of his Comus, had originally inserted, in
his manuscript draft of the poem, the following description of the
garden of the Hesperides.
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