THE GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES
Amid the Hesperian gardens, on whose banks
Bedewed with nectar and celestial songs
Eternal roses grow, and hyacinth,
And fruits of golden rind, on whose fair tree
The scaly harnessed dragon ever keeps
His uninchanted eye, around the verge
And sacred limits of this blissful Isle
The jealous ocean that old river winds
His far extended aims, till with steep fall
Half his waste flood the wide Atlantic fills;
And half the slow unfathomed Stygian pool
But soft, I was not sent to court your wonder
With distant worlds and strange removéd climes
Yet thence I come and oft from thence behold
The smoke and stir of this dim narrow spot
Milton subsequently drew his pen through these lines, for what reason is
not known. Bishop Newton observes, that this passage, saved from
intended destruction, may serve as a specimen of the truth of the
observation that
Poets lose half the praise they should have got
Could it be known what they discreetly blot.
Waller.
As I have quoted in an earlier page some unfavorable allusions to
Homer's description of a Grecian garden, it will be but fair to follow
up Milton's picture of Paradise, and Tasso's garden of Armida, and
Ariosto's Garden of Alcina, and Spenser's Garden of Adonis and his Bower
of Bliss, with Homer's description of the Garden of Alcinous. Minerva
tells Ulysses that the Royal mansion to which the garden of Alcinous is
attached is of such conspicuous grandeur and so generally known, that
any child might lead him to it;
For Phoeacia's sons
Possess not houses equalling in aught
The mansion of Alcinous, the king.
I shall give Cowper's version, because it may be less familiar to the
reader than Pope's, which is in every one's hand.
THE GARDEN OF ALCINOUS
Without the court, and to the gates adjoined
A spacious garden lay, fenced all around,
Secure, four acres measuring complete,
There grew luxuriant many a lofty tree,
Pomgranate, pear, the apple blushing bright,
The honeyed fig, and unctuous olive smooth.
Those fruits, nor winter's cold nor summer's heat
Fear ever, fail not, wither not, but hang
Perennial, while unceasing zephyr breathes
Gently on all, enlarging these, and those
Maturing genial; in an endless course.
Pears after pears to full dimensions swell,
Figs follow figs, grapes clustering grow again
Where clusters grew, and (every apple stripped)
The boughs soon tempt the gatherer as before.
There too, well rooted, and of fruit profuse,
His vineyard grows; part, wide extended, basks
In the sun's beams; the arid level glows;
In part they gather, and in part they tread
The wine-press, while, before the eye, the grapes
Here put their blossoms forth, there gather fast
Their blackness. On the garden's verge extreme
Flowers of all hues[040] smile all the year, arranged
With neatest art judicious, and amid
The lovely scene two fountains welling forth,
One visits, into every part diffused,
The garden-ground, the other soft beneath
The threshold steals into the palace court
Whence every citizen his vase supplies.
Homer's Odyssey, Book VII.
The mode of watering the garden-ground, and the use made of the water by
the public--
Whence every citizen his vase supplies--
can hardly fail to remind Indian and Anglo-Indian readers of a Hindu
gentleman's garden in Bengal.
Pope first published in the Guardian his own version of the account of
the garden of Alcinous and subsequently gave it a place in his entire
translation of Homer. In introducing the readers of the Guardian to
the garden of Alcinous he observes that "the two most celebrated wits of
the world have each left us a particular picture of a garden; wherein
those great masters, being wholly unconfined and pointing at pleasure,
may be thought to have given a full idea of what seemed most excellent
in that way. These (one may observe) consist entirely of the useful part
of horticulture, fruit trees, herbs, waters, &c. The pieces I am
speaking of are Virgil's account of the garden of the old Corycian, and
Homer's of that of Alcinous. The first of these is already known to the
English reader, by the excellent versions of Mr. Dryden and Mr.
Addison."
I do not think our present landscape-gardeners, or parterre-gardeners or
even our fruit or kitchen-gardeners can be much enchanted with Virgil's
ideal of a garden, but here it is, as "done into English," by John
Dryden, who describes the Roman Poet as "a profound naturalist," and "a
curious Florist."
THE GARDEN OF THE OLD CORYCIAN.
I chanc'd an old Corycian swain to know,
Lord of few acres, and those barren too,
Unfit for sheep or vines, and more unfit to sow:
Yet, lab'ring well his little spot of ground,
Some scatt'ring pot-herbs here and there he found,
Which, cultivated with his daily care
And bruis'd with vervain, were his frugal fare.
With wholesome poppy-flow'rs, to mend his homely board:
For, late returning home, he supp'd at ease,
And wisely deem'd the wealth of monarchs less:
The little of his own, because his own, did please.
To quit his care, he gather'd, first of all,
In spring the roses, apples in the fall:
And, when cold winter split the rocks in twain,
And ice the running rivers did restrain,
He stripp'd the bear's foot of its leafy growth,
And, calling western winds, accus'd the spring of sloth
He therefore first among the swains was found
To reap the product of his labour'd ground,
And squeeze the combs with golden liquor crown'd
His limes were first in flow'rs, his lofty pines,
With friendly shade, secur'd his tender vines.
For ev'ry bloom his trees in spring afford,
An autumn apple was by tale restor'd
He knew to rank his elms in even rows,
For fruit the grafted pear tree to dispose,
And tame to plums the sourness of the sloes
With spreading planes he made a cool retreat,
To shade good fellows from the summer's heat
Virgil's Georgics, Book IV.
An excellent Scottish poet--Allan Ramsay--a true and unaffected
describer of rural life and scenery--seems to have had as great a
dislike to topiary gardens, and quite as earnest a love of nature, as
any of the best Italian poets. The author of the "Gentle Shepherd" tells
us in the following lines what sort of garden most pleased his fancy.
ALLAN RAMSAY'S GARDEN.
I love the garden wild and wide,
Where oaks have plum-trees by their side,
Where woodbines and the twisting vine
Clip round the pear tree and the pine
Where mixed jonquils and gowans grow
And roses midst rank clover grow
Upon a bank of a clear strand,
In wrimplings made by Nature's hand
Though docks and brambles here and there
May sometimes cheat the gardener's care,
Yet this to me is Paradise,
Compared with prim cut plots and nice,
Where Nature has to Act resigned,
Till all looks mean, stiff and confined.
I cannot say that I should wish to see forest trees and docks and
brambles in garden borders. Honest Allan here runs a little into the
extreme, as men are apt enough to do, when they try to get as far as
possible from the side advocated by an opposite party.
I shall now exhibit two paintings of bowers. I begin with one from
Spenser.
A BOWER
And over him Art stryving to compayre
With Nature did an arber greene dispied[041]
Framéd of wanton yvie, flouring, fayre,
Through which the fragrant eglantine did spred
His prickling armes, entrayld with roses red,
Which daintie odours round about them threw
And all within with flowers was garnishéd
That, when myld Zephyrus emongst them blew,
Did breathe out bounteous smels, and painted colors shew
And fast beside these trickled softly downe
A gentle streame, whose murmuring wave did play
Emongst the pumy stones, and made a sowne,
To lull him soft asleepe that by it lay
The wearie traveiler wandring that way,
Therein did often quench his thirsty head
And then by it his wearie limbes display,
(Whiles creeping slomber made him to forget
His former payne,) and wypt away his toilsom sweat.
And on the other syde a pleasaunt grove
Was shott up high, full of the stately tree
That dedicated is t'Olympick Iove,
And to his son Alcides,[042] whenas hee
In Nemus gaynéd goodly victoree
Theirin the merry birds of every sorte
Chaunted alowd their cheerful harmonee,
And made emongst themselves a sweete consórt
That quickned the dull spright with musicall comfórt.
Fairie Queene, Book 2 Cant. 5 Stanzas 29, 30 and 31.
Here is a sweet picture of a "shady lodge" from the hand of Milton.
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