GARDENS OF THE POETS
"The chief use of flowers is to illustrate quotations from the
poets."
All English poets have ever been ready to sing English flowers until
jesters have laughed, and to sing garden flowers as well as wild
flowers. Few have really described a garden, though the orderly
distribution of flowers might be held to be akin to the restraint of
rhyme and rhythm in poetry.
[Illustration: Shakespeare Border at Hillside.]
It has been the affectionate tribute and happy diversion of those who
love both poetry and flowers to note the flowers beloved of various
poets, and gather them together, either in a book or a garden. The pages
of Milton cannot be forced, even by his most ardent admirers, to
indicate any intimate knowledge of flowers. He certainly makes some very
elegant classical allusions to flowers and fruits, and some amusingly
vague ones as well. "The Flowers of Spenser," and "A Posy from Chaucer,"
are the titles of most readable chapters in _A Garden of Simples_, but
the allusions and quotations from both authors are pleasing and
interesting, rather than informing as to the real variety and
description of the flowers of their day. Nearly all the older English
poets, though writing glibly of woods and vales, of shepherds and
swains, of buds and blossoms, scarcely allude to a flower in a natural
way. Herrick was truly a flower lover, and, as the critic said, "many
flowers grow to illustrate quotations from his works." The flowers named
of Shakespeare have been written about in varied books, _Shakespeare's
Garden_, _Shakespeare's Bouquet_, _Flowers from Stratford-on-Avon_, etc.
These are easily led in fulness of detail, exactness of information, and
delightful literary quality by that truly perfect book, beloved of all
garden lovers, _The Plant Lore and Garden Craft of Shakespeare_, by
Canon Ellacombe. Of it I never weary, and for it I am ever grateful.
Shakespeare Gardens, or Shakespeare Borders, too, are laid out and set
with every tree, shrub, and flower named in Shakespeare, and these are
over two hundred in number. A distinguishing mark of the Shakespeare
Border of Lady Warwick is the peculiar label set alongside each plant.
This label is of pottery, greenish-brown in tint, shaped like a
butterfly, bearing on its wings a quotation of a few words and the play
reference relating to each special plant. Of course these words have
been fired in and are thus permanent. Pretty as they are in themselves
they must be disfiguring to the borders--as all labels are in a garden.
In the garden at Hillside, near Albany, New York, grows a green and
flourishing Shakespeare Border, gathered ten years ago by the mistress
of the garden. I use the terms green and flourishing with exactness in
this connection, for a great impression made by this border is of its
thriving health, and also of the predominance of green leafage of every
variety, shape, manner of growth, and oddness of tint. In this latter
respect it is infinitely more beautiful than the ordinary border,
varying from silvery glaucous green through greens of yellow or brownish
shade to the blue-black greens of some herbs; and among these green
leaves are many of sweet or pungent scent, and of medicinal qualities,
such as are seldom grown to-day save in some such choice and chosen
spot. There is less bloom in this Shakespeare Border than in our modern
flower beds, and the flowers are not so large or brilliant as our
modern favorites; but, quiet as they are, they are said to excel the
blossoms of the same plants of Shakespeare's own day, which we learn
from the old herbalists were smaller and less varied in color and of
simpler tints than those of their descendants. At the first glance this
Shakespeare Border shines chiefly in the light of the imagination, as
stirred by the poet's noble words; but do not dwell on this border as a
whole, as something only to be looked at; read the pages of this garden,
dwell on each leafy sentence, and you are entranced with its beautiful
significance. It was not gathered with so much thought, and each plant
and seed set out and watched and reared like a delicate child, to become
a show place; it appeals for a more intimate regard; and we find that
its detail makes its charm.
Such a garden as this appeals warmly to anyone who is sensitive to the
imaginative element of flower beauty. Many garden makers forget that a
flower bed is a group of living beings--perhaps of sentient beings--as
well as a mass of beautiful color. Modern gardens tend far too much
toward the display of the united effect of growing plants, to a striving
for universal brilliancy, rather than attention to and love for separate
flowers. There was refreshment of spirit as well as of the senses in the
old-time garden of flowers, such as these planted in this Shakespeare
Border, and it stirred the heart of the poet as could no modern flower
gardens.
[Illustration: Long Border at Hillside.]
The scattering inflorescence and the tiny size of the blossoms give to
this Shakespeare Border an unusual aspect of demureness and delicacy,
and the plants seem to cling with affection and trust to the path of
their human protector; they look simple and confiding, and seem close
both to nature and to man. This homelike and modest quality is shown, I
think, even in the presentation in black and white given on page 216 and
opposite page 218, though it shows still more in the garden when the
wide range of tint of foliage is added.
A most appropriate companion of the old flowers in this Shakespeare
Border is the sun-dial, which is an exact copy of the one at Abbotsford,
Scotland. It bears the motto [Greek: ERCHETAI GAR NYX] meaning, "For
the night cometh." It was chosen by Sir Walter Scott, for his sun-dial,
as a solemn monitor to himself of the hour "when no man can work." It
was copied from a motto on the dial-plate of the watch of the great Dr.
Samuel Johnson; and it is curious that in both cases the word [Greek:
GAR] should be introduced, for it is not in the clause in the New
Testament from which the motto was taken. It is a beautiful motto and
one of singular appropriateness for a sun-dial. The pedestal of this
sun-dial is of simple lines, but it is dignified and pleasing, aside
from the great interest of association which surrounds it.
[Illustration: The Beauty of Winter Lilacs.]
I had a happy sense, when walking through this garden, that, besides my
congenial living companionship, I had the company of some noble
Elizabethan ghosts; and I know that if Shakespeare and Jonson and
Herrick were to come to Hillside, they would find the garden so familiar
to them; they would greet the plants like old friends, they would note
how fine grew the Rosemary this year, how sweet were the Lady's-smocks,
how fair the Gillyflowers. And Gerarde and Parkinson would ponder, too,
over all the herbs and simples of their own Physick Gardens, and compare
notes. Above all I seemed to see, walking soberly by my side, breathing
in with delight the varied scents of leaf and blossom, that lover and
writer of flowers and gardens, Lord Bacon--and not in the disguise of
Shakespeare either. For no stronger proofs can be found of the existence
of two individualities than are in the works of each of these men, in
their sentences and pages which relate to gardens and flowers.
This fair garden and Shakespeare Border are loveliest in the cool of the
day, in the dawn or at early eve; and those who muse may then remember
another Presence in a garden in the cool of the day. And then I recall
that gem of English poesy which always makes me pitiful of its author;
that he could write this, and yet, in his hundreds of pages of English
verse, make not another memorable line:--
"A Garden is a lovesome thing, God wot;
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Ferned grot,
The veriest school of Peace;
And yet the fool
Contends that God is not in gardens.
Not in gardens! When the eve is cool!
Nay, but I have a sign.
'Tis very sure God walks in mine."
Shakespeare Borders grow very readily and freely in England, save in the
case of the few tropical flowers and trees named in the pages of the
great dramatist; but this Shakespeare Border at Hillside needs much
cherishing. The plants of Heather and Broom and Gorse have to be
specially coddled by transplanting under cold frames during the long
winter months in frozen Albany; and thus they find vast contrast to
their free, unsheltered life in Great Britain.
[Illustration: Garden of Mrs. Frank Robinson, Wakefield, Rhode Island.]
Persistent efforts have been made to acclimate both Heather and Gorse in
America. We have seen how Broom came uninvited and spread unasked on the
Massachusetts coast; but Gorse and Heather have proved shy creatures. On
the beautiful island of Naushon the carefully planted Gorse may be found
spread in widely scattered spots and also on the near-by mainland, but
it cannot be said to have thrived markedly. The Scotch Heather, too, has
been frequently planted, and watched and pushed, but it is slow to
become acclimated. It is not because the winters are too cold, for it is
found in considerable amount in bitter Newfoundland; perhaps it prefers
to live under a crown.
Modern authors have seldom given their names to gardens, not even
Tennyson with his intimate and extended knowledge of garden flowers. A
Mary Howitt Garden was planned, full of homely old blooms, such as she
loves to name in her verse; but it would have slight significance save
to its maker, since no one cares to read Mary Howitt nowadays. In that
charming book, _Sylvana's Letters to an Unknown Friend_ (which I know
were written to me), the author, E. V. B., says, "The very ideal of a
garden, and the only one I know, is found in Shelley's _Sensitive
Plant_." With quick championing of a beloved poet, I at once thought of
the radiant garden of flowers in Keats's heart and poems. Then I reread
the _Sensitive Plant_ in a spirit of utmost fairness and critical
friendliness, and I am willing to yield the Shelley Garden to Sylvana,
while I keep, for my own delight, my Keats garden of sunshine, color,
and warmth.
That Keats had a profound knowledge and love of flowers is shown in his
letters as well as his poems. Only a few months before his death, when
stricken with and fighting a fatal disease, he wrote:--
"How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world impress a
sense of its natural beauties upon me! Like poor Falstaff, though I
do not babble, I think of green fields. I muse with greatest
affection on every flower I have known from my infancy--their
shapes and colors are as new to me as if I had just created them
with a superhuman fancy. It is because they are connected with the
most thoughtless and the happiest moments of my life."
Near the close of his _Endymion_ he wrote:--
"Nor much it grieves
To die, when summer dies on the cold sward.
Why, I have been a butterfly, a lord
Of flowers, garlands, love-knots, silly posies,
Groves, meadows, melodies, and arbor roses;
My kingdom's at its death, and just it is
That I should die with it."
In the summer of 1816, under the influence of a happy day at Hampstead,
he wrote that lovely poem, "I stood tiptoe upon a little hill." After a
description of the general scene, a special corner of beauty is thus
told:--
"A bush of May flowers with the bees about them--
Ah, sure no bashful nook could be without them--
And let a lush Laburnum oversweep them,
And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them
Moist, cool, and green; and shade the Violets
That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.
A Filbert hedge with Wild-brier over trim'd,
And clumps of Woodbine taking the soft wind,
Upon their summer thrones...."
Then come these wonderful lines, which belittle all other descriptions
of Sweet Peas:--
"Here are Sweet Peas, on tiptoe for a flight,
With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things
To bind them all about with tiny wings."
Keats states in his letters that his love of flowers was wholly for
those of the "common garden sort," not for flowers of the greenhouse or
difficult cultivation, nor do I find in his lines any evidence of
extended familiarity with English wild flowers. He certainly does not
know the flowers of woods and fields as does Matthew Arnold.
[Illustration: The Parson's Walk.]
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table says: "Did you ever hear a poet who
did not talk flowers? Don't you think a poem which for the sake of being
original should leave them out, would be like those verses where the
letter _a_ or _e_, or some other, is omitted? No; they will bloom over
and over again in poems as in the summer fields, to the end of time,
always old and always new." The Autocrat himself knew well a poet who
never talked flowers in his poems, a poet beloved of all other
poets,--Arthur Hugh Clough,--though he loved and knew all flowers. From
Matthew Arnold's beautiful tribute to him, are a few of his wonderful
flower lines, cut out from their fellows:--
"Through the thick Corn the scarlet Poppies peep,
And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see
Pale blue Convolvulus in tendrils creep,
And air-swept Lindens yield
Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers
Of bloom...,
* * * * *
"Soon will the high midsummer pomps come on,
Soon will the Musk Carnations break and swell.
Soon shall we have gold-dusted Snapdragon,
Sweet-william with his homely cottage smell,
And Stocks in fragrant blow."
Oh, what a master hand! Where in all English verse are fairer flower
hues? And where is a more beautiful description of a midsummer evening,
than Arnold's exquisite lines beginning:--
"The evening comes; the fields are still;
The tinkle of the thirsty rill."
Dr. Holmes was also a master in the description of garden flowers. I
should know, had I never been told save from his verses, just the kind
of a Cambridge garden he was reared in, and what flowers grew in it.
Lowell, too, gives ample evidence of a New England childhood in a
garden.
The gardens of Shenstone's _Schoolmistress_ and of Thomson's poems come
to our minds without great warmth of welcome from us; while Clare's
lines are full of charm:--
"And where the Marjoram once, and Sage and Rue,
And Balm, and Mint, with curl'd leaf Parsley grew,
And double Marigolds, and silver Thyme,
And Pumpkins 'neath the window climb.
And where I often, when a child, for hours
Tried through the pales to get the tempting flowers,
As Lady's Laces, everlasting Peas,
True-love-lies-bleeding, with the Hearts-at-ease
And Goldenrods, and Tansy running high,
That o'er the pale tops smiled on passers by."
A curious old seventeenth-century poet was the Jesuit, Rene Rapin. The
copy of his poem entitled _Gardens_ which I have seen, is the one in my
daughter's collection of garden books; it was "English'd by the
Ingenious Mr. Gardiner," and published in 1728. Hallam in his
_Introduction to the Literature of Europe_ gives a capital estimate of
this long poem of over three thousand lines. I find them pretty dull
reading, with much monotony of adjectives, and very affected notions for
plant names. I fancy he manufactured all his tedious plant traditions
himself.
[Illustration: Garden of Mary Washington.]
A pleasing little book entitled _Dante's Garden_ has collected evidence,
from his writings, of Dante's love of green, growing things. The title
is rather strained, since he rarely names individual flowers, and only
refers vaguely to their emblematic significance. I would have entitled
the book _Dante's Forest_, since he chiefly refers to trees; and the
Italian gardens of his days were of trees rather than flowers. There are
passages in his writings which have led some of his worshippers to
believe that his childhood was passed in a garden; but these references
are very indeterminate.
The picture of a deserted garden, with its sad sentiment has charmed the
fancy of many a poet. Hood, a true flower-lover, wrote this jingle in
his _Haunted House_:--
"The Marigold amidst the nettles blew,
The Gourd embrac'd the Rose bush in its ramble.
The Thistle and the Stock together grew,
The Hollyhock and Bramble.
"The Bearbine with the Lilac interlaced,
The sturdy Burdock choked its tender neighbor,
The spicy Pink. All tokens were effaced
Of human care and labor."
These lines are a great contrast to the dignified versification of The
Old Garden, by Margaret Deland, a garden around which a great city has
grown.
"Around it is the street, a restless arm
That clasps the country to the city's heart."
No one could read this poem without knowing that the author is a true
garden lover, and knowing as well that she spent her childhood in a
garden.
Another American poet, Edith Thomas, writes exquisitely of old gardens
and garden flowers.
"The pensile Lilacs still their favors throw.
The Star of Lilies, plenteous long ago,
Waits on the summer dusk, and faileth not.
The legions of the grass in vain would blot
The spicy Box that marks the garden row.
Let but the ground some human tendance know,
It long remaineth an engentled spot."
Let me for a moment, through the suggestion of her last two lines, write
of the impress left on nature through flower planting. "The garden long
remaineth an engentled spot." You cannot for years stamp out the mark of
a garden; intentional destruction may obliterate the garden borders, but
neglect never. The delicate flowers die, but some sturdy things spring
up happily and seem gifted with everlasting life. Fifteen years ago a
friend bought an old country seat on Long Island; near the site of the
new house, an old garden was ploughed deep and levelled to a lawn. Every
year since then the patient gardeners pull up, on this lawn, in
considerable numbers, Mallows, Campanulas, Star of Bethlehem,
Bouncing-bets and innumerable Asparagus shoots, and occasionally the
seedlings of other flowers which have bided their time in the dark
earth. Traces of the residence of Sir Walter Raleigh in Ireland may
still be seen in the growth of richly perfumed wall-flowers which he
brought from the Azores. The Affane Cherry is found where he planted it,
and some of his Cedars are living. The summer-house of Yew trees
sheltered him when he smoked in the garden, and in this garden he
planted Tobacco. Near by is the famous spot where he planted what were
then called Virginian Potatoes. By that planting they acquired the name
of Irish Potatoes.
I have spoken of the Prince Nurseries in Flushing; the old nurserymen
left a more lasting mark than their Nurseries, in the rare trees and
plants now found on the roads, and in the fields and gardens for many
miles around Flushing. With the Parsons family, who have been, since
1838, distributors of unusual plants, especially the splendid garden
treasures from China and Japan, they have made Flushing a delightful
nature-study.
In the humblest dooryard, and by the wayside in outlying parts of the
town, may be seen rare and beautiful old trees: a giant purple Beech is
in a laborer's yard; fine Cedars, Salisburias, red-flowered
Horse-chestnuts, Japanese flowering Quinces and Cherries, and even rare
Japanese Maples are to be found; a few survivors of the Chinese Mulberry
have a romantic interest as mementoes of a giant bubble of ruin. The
largest Scotch Laburnum I ever saw, glorious in golden bloom, is behind
an unkempt house. On the Parsons estate is a weeping Beech of unusual
size. Its branches trail on the ground in a vast circumference of 222
feet, forming a great natural arbor. The beautiful vernal light in this
tree bower may be described in Andrew Marvell's words:--
"Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade."
[Illustration: Box and Phlox.]
The photograph of it, shown opposite page 232, gives some scant idea of
its leafy walls; it has been for years the fit trysting-place of lovers,
as is shown by the initials carved on the great trunk. Great Judas
trees, sadly broken yet bravely blooming; decayed hedges of several
kinds of Lilacs, Syringas, Snowballs, and Yuccas of princely size and
bearing still linger. Everywhere are remnants of Box hedges. One unkempt
dooryard of an old Dutch farm-house was glorified with a broad double
row of yellow Lily at least sixty feet in length. Everywhere is
Wistaria, on porches, fences, houses, and trees; the abundant Dogwood
trees are often overgrown with Wistaria. The most exquisite sight of the
floral year was the largest Dogwood tree I have ever seen, radiant with
starry white bloom, and hung to the tip of every white-flowered branch
with the drooping amethystine racemes of Wistaria of equal luxuriance.
Golden-yellow Laburnum blooms were in one case mingled with both purple
and white Wistaria. These yellow, purple, and white blooms of similar
shape were a curious sight, as if a single plant had been grafted. As I
rode past so many glimpses of loveliness mingled with so much present
squalor, I could but think of words of the old hymn:--
"Where every prospect pleases
And only man is vile."
Could the hedges, trees, and vines which came from the Prince and
Parsons Nurseries have been cared for, northeastern Long Island, which
is part of the city of Greater New York, would still be what it was
named by the early explorers, "The Pearl of New Netherland."
[Illustration: Within the Weeping Beech.]