When the world’s weight is on thy mind,
And all its black-winged fears affright,
Think how the daisy draws her blind,
And sleeps without a light.
And for the Bird room, I have on the wall W. C. Bryant’s beautiful
poem, “Lines to a Waterfowl.” You will remember these verses:—
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,
The desert and illimitable air—
Lone wandering, but not lost.
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone
Will lead my steps aright.
On more than one occasion visitors have thanked me for having left them
these goodnight thoughts.
Of course, being a cottage in the midst of a flower-patch, we never run
short of flowers, and you find plenty indoors. When they are in bloom,
however, I always like to put a bunch of white moss rose-buds (one of
my favourite flowers) in a blue mug on a visitor’s dressing-table.
But whatever the flowers, it is our custom to welcome all guests with
rosemary, for I have discovered that the scent of it (even the sight
of it) is a certain cure for the divers maladies caused by overdoses
of unsatisfactory dressmakers, cooks who give notice every month,
much boredom in crowded unventilated drawing-rooms, and all the many
varieties of restlessness that have been invented to help women to kill
time. It has also been known to prove efficacious in cases of people
prone to overwork.
At any rate, if you come to visit me you will find a vase with sprigs
of rosemary on the deep window-ledge in your room; and few of my
friends go away without taking a slip from the gnarled bush by the door
to plant in less congenial surroundings.
I believe Shakespeare said that rosemary typifies remembrance; Virginia
unblushingly improves on Shakespeare by insisting that it means the
remembrance of peace.