In the spring when the first midges dance and warm days lure the
last-year's butterfly, the scarlet of the cardinals begins to flicker
through the ivory smoke of the mosses. Then the alligator leaves his
winter ooze, and the widening "O" of the ripple which his gar-like nose
makes, travels slowly across the sullen ponds, where the pendant
gonfalons of the mosses kiss their imaginary duplicates, hanging head
downward in the red water.
When the first frog honks with the bull-voiced trumpet of resurgent
spring, the jasmine rings its little hawk-bells, golden harp notes
through the forest; and the usurping wistaria assumes the purple,
reigning imperial and alone, flaunting its _palidementum_ in a cascade
of lilac amid the matrix of the mosses. Its sleek, muscular vine-arms
writhe round the clasped bodies of live oaks as if two lovers slept
beneath a cloak, and the cloisonné pavilion of their dalliance drips a
blue-glaze of shadows overhead.
Underneath this motley canopy of gray and blue, lush with the early
tenderness of leaves, the pink azaleas open light-shy eyes like pupils
of albinos, sloughing off delicate pods that smoulder, when the wind
blows, live coals among the gray of furnace ashes. Here are magenta
carpets fit for leprechauns, when crescent moons glimmer upon the ocher
ponds, and the slow fireflies light their phantom lanterns, weaving to
and fro about the ivory-orange marble of the tomb.
Each April day brings opalescent waves of birds that dart like living
brands about the aisles to light the flower lamps; nonpareils, orioles,
and hummingbirds, a mist of speed upon their wings, while the blue heron
stands one-leggéd by the ponds, watching the garden till it seethes and
flames with colors from the cloaks of mandarins.
High in the ancient forest the magnolias burn the perfect alban lucence
of their lamps; white are their ivory cups like priestly linen, and
fragrant with the tang of foreign citrons. An esoteric, mirrored swan
slides by like Cleopatra's barge, while drums of color beaten by a
maniac blend with old tints of Leonardo's dreams, colors that God might
see if his own lightning blasted out his eyes.
This march of color chants a strange barbaric fitness of dithyrambic
chords, and moves processional across the days like some encarnadined
durbar, where a huge Ethiopian eunuch in red moon-shaped slippers and an
orange turban walks with a glittering scimetar, leading a brace of
sleepy leopards drugged and golden eyed; the caparisoned elephants swing
down a latticed street; silk shawls hang from balconies, brushing the
domed gilt of howdahs; and ruby-roped, the maharajahs sway behind the
mahout with his peavey-goad.
The stark denial of the blue-ribbed sky looks down upon this garden,
where the wantonness of earth is flaunted in the spring against the face
of heaven's void sterility. Here stolid faces look ashamed. When the sun
leans on boreal wings, there is a month that lovers walk here justified,
while flower throats cry in vast choirs, "Glory to life!" and the
uplifted trumpets of vine tubas shout with noise of color set to notes
of bloom.