human
Can you continue this poem for me?
  For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the
flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is
come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
These are thy glorious works, Parent of good!
Almighty, Thine this universal frame,
Thus wondrous fair; Thyself how wondrous then!
Soft roll your incense, herbs and fruits and flowers,
In mingled clouds to HIM whose sun exalts
Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.
ornament that Art has yet conceived.
embellishments which no productions of human skill can rival.
O flower of an earthly spring! destined to blossom in the eternal
Byron tells us that the stars are
A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves _a star_.
The sweetest things that ever grew
Beside a human door.
A flower is not a flower alone,
A thousand sanctities invest it.
An undevout astronomer is mad.
constitutionally religious, are always delighted readers of the
Were I, O God, in churchless lands remaining
Far from all voice of teachers and divines,
My soul would find in flowers of thy ordaining
Priests, sermons, shrines
the _utilities_--that the Divine Artist himself is _a lover of
Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain,
Of His unrivalled pencil. He inspires
Their balmy odours, and imparts then hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes
In grains as countless as the sea side sands
The forms with which he sprinkles all the earth.
George Wither has well said in commendation of his Muse:
Her divine skill taught me this;
That from every thing I saw
I could some instruction draw,
And raise pleasure to the height
By the meanest object's sight,
By the murmur of a spring
_Or the least bough's rustelling;
By a daisy whose leaves spread
Shut, when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree_,
She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Thomas Campbell, with a poet's natural gallantry, has exclaimed,
Without the smile from partial Beauty won,
Oh! what were man?--a world without a sun!
Foreigners of many lands,
They form one social shade, as if convened
By magic summons of the Orphean lyre.
These little "foreigners of many lands" have been so skilfully
acclimatized and multiplied and rendered common, that for a few
The red rose, is the red rose still, and from the lily's cup
An odor fragrant as at first, like frankincense goes up.
Heavens! what a goodly prospect spreads around
Of hills and dales and woods and lawns and spires,
And glittering towns and gilded streams, 'till all
The stretching landscape into smoke decays!
Happy Brittannia! where the Queen of Arts,
Inspiring vigor, Liberty, abroad
Walks unconfined, even to thy farthest cots,
And scatters plenty with unsparing hand.
And here let me put in a word in favor of the much-abused English
The cold and cloudy clime
Where he was born, but where he would not die.
Rich is thy soil and merciful thy clime.
"A change came o'er the spirit of my dream."
When I had once more crossed the wide Atlantic--and (not by the
Thou art free
My country! and 'tis joy enough and pride
For one hour's perfect bliss, _to tread the grass
Of England once again_.
"Nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower."
I have never beheld any thing more lovely than scenery
characteristically English; and Goldsmith, who was something of a
beautiful England,
Where lawns extend that scorn Arcadian pride.
It is impossible to put into any form of words the faintest
Musing through the _lawny_ vale:
Stupendous rocks
That from the sun-redoubling valley lift
Cool to the middle air their _lawny_ tops.
It gives the Anglo-Indian Exile the heart-ache to think of these
ramblings over English scenes.
Bengala's plains are richly green,
Her azure skies of dazzling sheen,
Her rivers vast, her forests grand.
Her bowers brilliant,--but the land,
Though dear to countless eyes it be,
And fair to mine, hath not for me
The charm ineffable of _home_;
For still I yearn to see the foam
Of wild waves on thy pebbled shore,
Dear Albion! to ascend once more
Thy snow-white cliffs; to hear again
The murmur of thy circling main--
To stroll down each romantic dale
Beloved in boyhood--to inhale
Fresh life on green and breezy hills--
To trace the coy retreating rills--
To see the clouds at summer-tide
Dappling all the landscape wide--
To mark the varying gloom and glow
As the seasons come and go--
Again the green meads to behold
Thick strewn with silvery gems and gold,
Where kine, bright-spotted, large, and sleek,
Browse silently, with aspect meek,
Or motionless, in shallow stream
Stand mirror'd, till their twin shapes seem,
Feet linked to feet, forbid to sever,
By some strange magic fixed for ever.
And oh! once more I fain would see
(Here never seen) a poor man _free_,
And valuing more an humble name,
But stainless, than a guilty fame,
How sacred is the simplest cot,
Where Freedom dwells!--where she is not
How mean the palace! Where's the spot
She loveth more than thy small isle,
Queen of the sea? Where hath her smile
So stirred man's inmost nature? Where
Are courage firm, and virtue fair,
And manly pride, so often found
As in rude huts on English ground,
Where e'en the serf who slaves for hire
May kindle with a freeman's fire?
How proud a sight to English eyes
Are England's village families!
The patriarch, with his silver hair,
The matron grave, the maiden fair.
The rose-cheeked boy, the sturdy lad,
On Sabbath day all neatly clad:--
Methinks I see them wend their way
On some refulgent morn of May,
By hedgerows trim, of fragrance rare,
Towards the hallowed House of Prayer!
I can love _all_ lovely lands,
But England _most_; for she commands.
As if she bore a parent's part,
The dearest movements of my heart;
And here I may not breathe her name.
Without a thrill through all my frame.
Never shall this heart be cold
To thee, my country! till the mould
(Or _thine_ or _this_) be o'er it spread.
And form its dark and silent bed.
I never think of bliss below
But thy sweet hills their green heads show,
Of love and beauty never dream.
But English faces round me gleam!
Two scraps of verse of a similar tendency shall follow this prose
I stood, upon an English hill,
And saw the far meandering rill,
A vein of liquid silver, run
Sparkling in the summer sun;
While adown that green hill's side,
And along the valley wide,
Sheep, like small clouds touched with light,
Or like little breakers bright,
Sprinkled o'er a smiling sea,
Seemed to float at liberty.
Scattered all around were seen,
White cots on the meadows green.
Open to the sky and breeze,
Or peeping through the sheltering trees,
On a light gate, loosely hung,
Laughing children gaily swung;
Oft their glad shouts, shrill and clear,
Came upon the startled ear.
Blended with the tremulous bleat,
Of truant lambs, or voices sweet,
Of birds, that take us by surprise,
And mock the quickly-searching eyes.
Nearer sat a fair-haired boy,
Whistling with a thoughtless joy;
A shepherd's crook was in his hand,
Emblem of a mild command;
And upon his rounded cheek
Were hues that ripened apples streak.
Disease, nor pain, nor sorrowing,
Touched that small Arcadian king;
His sinless subjects wandered free--
Confusion without anarchy.
Happier he upon his throne.
The breezy hill--though all alone--
Than the grandest monarchs proud
Who mistrust the kneeling crowd.
On a gently rising ground,
The lovely valley's farthest bound,
Bordered by an ancient wood,
The cots in thicker clusters stood;
And a church, uprose between,
Hallowing the peaceful scene.
Distance o'er its old walls threw
A soft and dim cerulean hue,
While the sun-lit gilded spire
Gleamed as with celestial fire!
I have crossed the ocean wave,
Haply for a foreign grave;
Haply never more to look
On a British hill or brook;
Haply never more to hear
Sounds unto my childhood dear;
Yet if sometimes on my soul
Bitter thoughts beyond controul
Throw a shade more dark than night,
Soon upon the mental sight
Flashes forth a pleasant ray
Brighter, holier than the day;
And unto that happy mood
All seems beautiful and good.
Green herbs and gushing springs in some hot waste
Though, grateful to the traveller's sight and taste,
Seem far less sweet and fair than fruits and flowers
That breathe, in foreign lands, of English bowers.
Thy gracious gift, dear lady, well recalls
Sweet scenes of home,--the white cot's trellised walls--
The trim red garden path--the rustic seat--
The jasmine-covered arbour, fit retreat
For hearts that love repose. Each spot displays
Some long-remembered charm. In sweet amaze
I feel as one who from a weary dream
Of exile wakes, and sees the morning beam
Illume the glorious clouds of every hue
That float o'er scenes his happy childhood knew.
How small a spark may kindle fancy's flame
And light up all the past! The very same
Glad sounds and sights that charmed my heart of old
Arrest me now--I hear them and behold.
Ah! yonder is the happy circle seated
Within, the favorite bower! I am greeted
With joyous shouts; my rosy boys have heard
A father's voice--their little hearts are stirred
With eager hope of some new toy or treat
And on they rush, with never-resting feet!
Gone is the sweet illusion--like a scene
Formed by the western vapors, when between
The dusky earth, and day's departing light
The curtain falls of India's sudden night.
Dear is the forest frowning o'er his head.
And dear _the velvet greensward_ to his tread.
Happy is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than her own.
But let us quit the open fields for a time, and turn again to the
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.
"For the heath which was the third part of our plot--
I wish it to be framed
As much as may be to a natural wildness.
Trees I'd have none in't, but some thickets made
Only of sweet-briar and honey-suckle,
And some wild vine amongst; and the ground set
With violets, strawberries, and primroses;
For these are sweet and prosper in the shade."
The majority of mankind, in the most active spheres of life, have
"Gave his brother some directions about his garden" (at Wooton
Surrey), "which, he was desirous to put into some form, for
which he was to remove a mountain overgrown with large trees and
thickets and a moat within ten yards of the house."
No sooner said than done. His brother dug down the mountain and
Though Evelyn dearly loved a garden, his chief delight was not in
Sir William Temple was so attached to his garden, that he left
"To see the pleasant fields, the crystal fountains,
And take the gentle air amongst the mountains.
"To walk amongst orchards, gardens, bowers, mounts, and arbours,
artificial wildernesses, green thickets, arches, groves, lawns,
rivulets, fountains, and such like pleasant places, (like that
Ah! happy Swains! if they their bliss but knew,
Whom, far from boisterous war, Earth's bosom true
With easy food supplies. If they behold
No lofty dome its gorgeous gates unfold
And pour at morn from all its chambers wide
Of flattering visitants the mighty tide;
Nor gaze on beauteous columns richly wrought,
Or tissued robes, or busts from Corinth brought;
Nor their white wool with Tyrian poison soil,
Nor taint with Cassia's bark their native oil;
_Yet peace is theirs; a life true bliss that yields;
And various wealth; leisure mid ample fields,
Grottoes, and living lakes, and vallies green,
And lowing herds; and 'neath a sylvan screen,
Delicious slumbers. There the lawn and cave
With beasts of chase abound._ The young ne'er crave
A prouder lot; their patient toil is cheered;
Their Gods are worshipped and their sires revered;
And there when Justice passed from earth away
She left the latest traces of her sway.
Which not nice art,
In beds and _curious knots_, but nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain.
arrangements and divisions of flowers and flower-beds.
Though Bacon went not quite so freely to nature as our latest
On thy realm
Philosophy his sovereign lustre spread;
Yet did he deign to light with casual glance
The wilds of Taste, Yes, sagest Verulam,
'Twas thine to banish from the royal groves
Each childish vanity of crisped knot
And sculptured foliage; to the lawn restore
Its ample space, and bid it feast the sight
With verdure pure, unbroken, unabridged;
For verdure soothes the eye, as roseate sweets
The smell, or music's melting strains the ear.
Witness his high arched hedge
In pillored state by carpentry upborn,
With colored mirrors decked and prisoned birds.
But, when our step has paced the proud parterre,
And reached the heath, then Nature glads our eye
Sporting in all her lovely carelessness,
There smiles in varied tufts the velvet rose,
There flaunts the gadding woodbine, swells the ground
In gentle hillocks, and around its sides
Through blossomed shades the secret pathway steals.
If Heaven the grateful liberty would give
That I might choose my method how to live;
And all those hours propitious Fate should lend
In blissful ease and satisfaction spend;
Near some fair town I'd have a private seat
Built uniform; not little; nor too great:
Better if on a rising ground it stood,
On this side fields, on that a neighbouring wood.
Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love,
News from the humming city comes to it
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells;
And sitting muffled in dark leaves you hear
The windy clanging of the minster clock;
Although between it and the garden lies
A league of grass.
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the _sound_.
Shelley, in one of his sweetest poems, speaking of a scene in the
Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
_The city's voice itself is soft_, like solitude's.
This our life, exempt from public haunt,
Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
To whom to whisper solitude is sweet.
Sacred to ridicule his whole life long,
And the sad burden of a merry song.
Thomas Sharp, a watchmaker, got possession of the fragments of
Thus, thus (and this deserved great Virgil's praise)
The old Corycian yeoman passed his days;
Thus his wise life Abdolonymus spent;
Th' ambassadors, which the great emperor sent
To offer him a crown, with wonder found
The reverend gardener, hoeing of his ground;
Unwillingly and slow and discontent
From his loved cottage to a throne he went;
And oft he stopped, on his triumphant way:
And oft looked back: and oft was heard to say
Not without sighs, Alas! I there forsake
A happier kingdom than I go to take.
Methinks, I see great Dioclesian walk
In the Salonian garden's noble shade
Which by his own imperial hands was made,
I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk
With the ambassadors, who come in vain
To entice him to a throne again.
"If I, my friends," said he, "should to you show
All the delights which in these gardens grow,
'Tis likelier much that you should with me stay,
Than 'tis that you should carry me away:
And trust me not, my friends, if every day
I walk not here with more delight,
Than ever, after the most happy sight
In triumph to the Capitol I rode,
To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost a god,"
Where does the wisdom and the power divine
In a more bright and sweet reflection shine?
Where do we finer strokes and colors see
Of the Creator's real poetry.
Than when we with attention look
Upon the third day's volume of the book?
If we could open and intend our eye
_We all, like Moses, might espy,
E'en in a bush, the radiant Deity_.
forwards to it with their cloven hoofs!"
Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned
Or of revived Adonis or renowned
Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son
Or that, not mystic, where the sapient King
So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied: and overhead up grew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene; and as, the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops,
The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung:
Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neighbouring round;
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once, of golden hue,
Appear'd, with gay enamell'd colours mix'd;
On which the sun more glad impress'd his beams,
Than on fair evening cloud, or humid bow.
When God hath shower'd the earth; so lovely seem'd
That landscape: and of pure now purer air
Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair: now gentle gales,
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the Blest; with such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles.
Southward through Eden went a river large,
Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill
Pass'd underneath ingulf'd; for God had thrown
That mountain as his garden mould, high raised
Upon the rapid current, which through veins
Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn,
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill
Water'd the garden; thence united fell
Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,
Which from his darksome passage now appears;
And now, divided into four main streams,
Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm
And country, whereof here needs no account;
But rather to tell how, if art could tell,
How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,
With mazy error under pendent shades,
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art
In beds and curious knots, but nature boon
Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade
Imbrown'd the noontide bowers; thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various view;
Groves whose rich, trees wept odorous gums and balm;
Others whose fruit, burnish'd with golden rind,
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true,
If true, here only, and of delicious taste:
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed;
Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap
Of some irriguous valley spread her store,
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose:
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall
Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake,
That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown'd
Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.
The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove attune,
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal Spring.
Know, all the distant din that world can keep,
Rolls o'er my grotto, and but soothes my sleep.
There my retreat the best companions grace
Chiefs out of war and statesmen out of place.
There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl
The feast of reason and the flow of soul;
And he whose lightnings pierced the Iberian lines
Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines;
Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain
Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.
The poet has given us in one of his letters a long and lively
Thou, who shalt stop, where Thames' translucent wave
Shines a broad mirror through the shadowy cave,
Where lingering drops from mineral roofs distil,
And pointed crystals break the sparkling rill,
Unpolished gems no ray on pride bestow,
And latent metals innocently glow,
Approach! Great Nature studiously behold,
And eye the mine without a wish for gold
Approach--but awful! Lo, the Egerian grot,
Where, nobly pensive, ST JOHN sat and thought,
Where British sighs from dying WYNDHAM stole,
And the bright flame was shot thro' MARCHMONT'S soul;
Let such, such only, tread this sacred floor
Who dare to love their country, and be poor.
Horace Walpole, speaking of the poet's garden, tells us that "the
Cliveden's proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love,
The humble roof, the garden's scanty line,
Ill suit the genius of the bard divine;
But fancy now displays a fairer scope
And Stanhope's plans unfold the soul of Pope.
His fancy now displays a fairer scope.
Or the enlarger and improver might have taken his motto from
To my _unfolding_ lend a gracious ear.
Me, let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of reposing age;
With lenient arts extend a mother's breath;
Make langour smile, and smooth the bed of death;
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep at least one parent from the sky.
"My Lord has spoken justly of his lady; why not I of my mother?
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,
has had its interest with people in general much increased by its
anatomy.
----An old oak whose boughs are mossed with age,
And high top bald with dry antiquity.
_As You Like it_.
Shakespeare, who has spread its fame over many lands.
There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter,
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns,
And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle;
And makes milch cows yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner.
You have heard of such a spirit; and well you know,
The superstitious, idle-headed eld
Received, and did deliver to our age,
This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth.
"Herne, the hunter" is said to have hung himself upon one of the
branches of this tree, and even,
----Yet there want not many that do fear,
In deep of night to walk by this Herne's Oak.
Sir Philip Sidney's Oak at Penshurst mentioned by Ben Jonson--
That taller tree, of which the nut was set
At his great birth, where all the Muses met--
Yonder tree which stands the sacred mark
Of noble Sidney's birth.
Yardley Oak, immortalized by Cowper, is now in a state of decay.
Time made thee what thou wert--king of the woods!
And time hath made thee what thou art--a cave
For owls to roost in.
Live in description and look green in song.
Ah! friend, 'tis true--this truth you lovers know;
In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow;
In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes
Of hanging mountains and of sloping greens;
Joy lives not here, to happier seats it flies,
And only dwells where Wortley casts her eyes.
What are the gay parterre, the chequered shade,
The morning bower, the evening colonnade,
But soft recesses of uneasy minds,
To sigh unheard in to the passing winds?
So the struck deer, in some sequestered part,
Lies down to die, the arrow at his heart;
He, stretched unseen, in coverts hid from day,
Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away.
These are exquisite lines, and have given delight to innumerable
readers, but they gave no delight to Lady Mary. In writing to her
Essays. This fourth Epistle was addressed, as most readers will
friend's fame than his own."
Something there is more needful than expense,
And something previous e'en to taste--'tis sense;
Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven,
And though no science fairly worth the seven;
A light, which in yourself you must perceive;
Jones and Le Nôtre have it not to give.
To build, or plant, whatever you intend,
To rear the column or the arch to bend;
To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot;
In all let Nature never be forgot.
But treat the goddess like a modest fair,
Nor over dress nor leave her wholly bare;
Let not each beauty every where be spied,
Where half the skill is decently to hide.
He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds,
Surprizes, varies, and conceals the bounds.
_Consult the genius of the place in all_;
That tells the waters or to rise or fall;
Or helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale,
Or scoops in circling theatres the vale;
Calls in the country, catches opening glades,
Joins willing woods and varies shades from shades;
Now breaks, or now directs, th' intending lines;
Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.
Still follow sense, of every art the soul;
Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole,
Spontaneous beauties all around advance,
Start e'en from difficulty, strike from chance;
Nature shall join you; time shall make it grow
A work to wonder at--perhaps a STOWE.
Without it proud Versailles! Thy glory falls;
And Nero's terraces desert their walls.
The vast parterres a thousand hands shall make,
Lo! Cobham comes and floats them with a lake;
Or cut wide views through mountains to the plain,
You'll wish your hill or sheltered seat again.
Sweet smiling village! Loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen
And desolation saddens all the green,--
_One only master grasps thy whole domain_.
Where then, ah! where shall poverty reside,
To scape the pressure of contiguous pride?
It puzzles much the sage's brains
Where Eden stood of yore,
Some place it in Arabia's plains,
Some say it is no more.
But Cobham can these tales confute,
As all the curious know;
For he hath proved beyond dispute,
That Paradise is STOWE.
Thomson also calls the place a paradise:
That o'er the garden and the rural seat
Preside, which shining through the cheerful land
In countless numbers blest Britannia sees;
O, lead me to the wide-extended walks,
_The fair majestic paradise of Stowe!_
Not Persian Cyrus on Ionia's shore
E'er saw such sylvan scenes; such various art
By genius fired, such ardent genius tamed
By cool judicious art, that in the strife
All-beauteous Nature fears to be out-done.
His verdant files
Of ordered trees should here inglorious range,
Instead of squadrons flaming o'er the field,
And long embattled hosts.
Oh, knew he but his happiness, of men
The happiest he! Who far from public rage
Deep in the vale, with a choice few retired
Drinks the pure pleasures of the rural life, &c.
Then again:--
Let others brave the flood in quest of gain
And beat for joyless months, the gloomy wave.
_Let such as deem it glory to destroy,
Rush into blood, the sack of cities seek;
Unpierced, exulting in the widow's wail,
The virgin's shriek and infant's trembling cry._
While he, from all the stormy passions free
That restless men involve, hears and _but_ hears,
At distance safe, the human tempest roar,
Wrapt close in conscious peace. The fall of kings,
The rage of nations, and the crush of states,
Move not the man, who from the world escaped,
In still retreats and flowery solitudes,
To nature's voice attends, from month to month,
And day to day, through the revolving year;
Admiring sees her in her every shape;
Feels all her sweet emotions at his heart;
Takes what she liberal gives, nor asks for more.
He, when young Spring, protudes the bursting gems
Marks the first bud, and sucks the healthful gale
Into his freshened soul; her genial hour
He full enjoys, and not a beauty blows
And not an opening blossom breathes in vain.
Such are thy beauties, Rainham, such the haunts
Of angels, in primeval guiltless days
When man, imparadised, conversed with God.
Next to the fair ascent our steps we traced,
Where shines afar the bold rotunda placed;
The artful dome Ionic columns bear
Light as the fabric swells in ambient air.
Beneath enshrined the Tuscan Venus stands
And beauty's queen the beauteous scene commands:
The fond beholder sees with glad surprize,
Streams glisten, lawns appear, and forests rise--
Here through thick shades alternate buildings break,
There through the borders steals the silver lake,
A soft variety delights the soul,
And harmony resulting crowns the whole.
Tell how his pleasing Stowe employs his time.
Or dost thou give the winds afar to blow
Each vexing thought, and heart-devouring woe,
And fix thy mind alone on rural scenes,
_To turn the level lawns to liquid plains_?
To raise the creeping rills from humble beds
And force the latent spring to lift their heads,
On watery columns, capitals to rear,
That mix their flowing curls with upper air?
Or slowly walk along the mazy wood
To meditate on all that's wise and good.
To turn the level lawn to liquid plains--
Will remind the reader of Pope's
Lo! Cobham comes and floats them with a lake--
And _Cobham's groves_ and Windsor's green retreats
When Pope describes them have a thousand sweets.
"Magnificence and splendour," says Mr. Whately, the author of
subsequently completed them.
How airy and how light the graceful arch,
Yet awful as the consecrated roof
Re-echoing pious anthems.
Lyttelton family had evinced so ungenerous a feeling towards the
infinitely more precious than all the wine, venison, beef, or
buttercups, would "_mak braw pies_."
A profound feeling for the beautiful is generally held to be an
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever?
The vision and the faculty divine,
and made capable, like some mysterious enchanter, of
Clothing the palpable and the familiar
With golden exhalations of the dawn.
Though nature's sternest painter, yet _the best_.
His generous ardor no cold medium knew.
Though Dr. Johnson speaks so contemptuously of Shenstone's rural
Nor, Shenstone, thou
Shalt pass without thy meed, thou son of peace!
Who knew'st, perchance, to harmonize thy shades
Still softer than thy song; yet was that song
Nor rude nor inharmonious when attuned
To pastoral plaint, or tale of slighted love.
The Viscomte, though his English composition was so quaint and
'Plants of his hand, and children of his care.'
In sunny garden bowers
Where vernal winds each tree's low tones awaken,
And buds and bells with changes mark the hours.
For Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her.
I care not Fortune what you me deny,
You cannot bar me of free Nature's grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face:
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns and living streams at eve:
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the _great children_ leave:--
Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.
"Gardening is a source of much greater profit than is generally
Oh! there is joy and happiness in every thing I see,
Which bids my soul rise up and bless the God that blesses me
commencing:--
Thrice welcome, little English flower!
My mother country's white and red--
Seized and tied down to judge, how wretched I,
Who can't be silent, and who will not lie.
I sit with sad civility, I read
With honest anguish and an aching head.
O Hertford, fitted or to shine in courts
With unaffected grace, or walk the plain,
With innocence and meditation joined
In soft assemblage, listen to my song,
Which thy own season paints; when nature all
Is blooming and benevolent like thee.
Once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens, how the style refines!
Slippered, and with hands,
Each in a waistcoat pocket, (so that all
Might yet repose that could) was seen one morn
Eating a wondering peach from off the tree.
them. Over the entrance is erected a tablet on which is the
following inscription:
In yonder grave a Druid lies,
are familiar to all readers of English poetry.
Glide gently, thus for ever glide,
O Thames, that other bards may see
As lovely visions by thy side
As now fair river! come to me;
O glide, fair stream for ever so,
Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,
Till all our minds for ever flow
As thy deep waters now are flowing.
Say, shall we wind
Along the streams? or walk the smiling mead?
Or court the forest-glades? or wander wild
Among the waving harvests? or ascend,
While radiant Summer opens all its pride,
Thy hill, delightful Shene? Here let us sweep
The boundless landscape now the raptur'd eye,
Exulting swift, to huge Augusta send,
Now to the sister hills that skirt her plain,
To lofty Harrow now, and now to where
Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow
In lovely contrast to this glorious view
Calmly magnificent, then will we turn
To where the silver Thames first rural grows
There let the feasted eye unwearied stray,
Luxurious, there, rove through the pendent woods
That nodding hang o'er Harrington's retreat,
And stooping thence to Ham's embowering walks,
Beneath whose shades, in spotless peace retir'd,
With her the pleasing partner of his heart,
The worthy Queensbury yet laments his Gay,
And polish'd Cornbury woos the willing Muse
Slow let us trace the matchless vale of Thames
Fair winding up to where the Muses haunt
In Twit nam's bowers, and for their Pope implore
The healing god, to loyal Hampton's pile,
To Clermont's terrass'd height, and Esher's groves;
Where in the sweetest solitude, embrac'd
By the soft windings of the silent Mole,
From courts and senates Pelham finds repose
Enchanting vale! beyond whate'er the Muse
Has of Achaia or Hesperia sung!
O vale of bliss! O softly swelling hills!
On which the _Power of Cultivation_ lies,
And joys to see the wonders of his toil.
So up thy hill, ambrosial Richmond, heaves
Dull Maurice, all his granite weight of leaves.
Towards the latter part of the last century the Empress of Russia
predominates in my _plantomanie_."
I omitted when alluding to those Englishmen in past times who
anticipated the taste of the present day in respect to laying out
The English style of landscape-gardening being founded on natural
Art, glory, Freedom, fail--but Nature still is fair.
"They" (The Duke of Argyle and Jeanie Deans) "paused for a
moment on the brow of a hill, to gaze on the unrivalled
landscape it presented. A huge sea of verdure, with crossing and
intersecting promontories of massive and tufted groves was
tenanted by numberless flocks and herds which seemed to wander
unrestrained and unbounded through the rich pastures. The
Thames, here turreted with villas, and there garlanded with
forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch
of the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but
accessaries, and bore on its bosom an hundred barks and skiffs
whose white sails and gaily fluttering pennons gave life to the
whole." _The Heart of Mid-Lothian_.
interested in the prospect when on a cloudy day the whole "sea of
_spiritualize_ our mountains for all the blue skies of Italy."
residences in the land. The grounds are truly beautiful and most
neighbourhood, suggested to Wordsworth the following sonnet.
Chatsworth! thy stately mansion, and the pride
Of thy domain, strange contrast do present
To house and home in many a craggy tent
Of the wild Peak, where new born waters glide
Through fields whose thrifty occupants abide
As in a dear and chosen banishment
With every semblance of entire content;
So kind is simple Nature, fairly tried!
Yet he whose heart in childhood gave his troth
To pastoral dales, then set with modest farms,
May learn, if judgment strengthen with his growth,
That not for Fancy only, pomp hath charms;
And, strenuous to protect from lawless harms
The extremes of favored life, may honour both.
The two noblest of modern public gardens in England are those at
The light militia of the lower sky.
They guarded her from 'the white-gloved beaux,'
These though unseen are ever on the wing,
Hang o'er the box, _and hover o'er the Ring_.
She hath left you all her walks,
Her private arbors and new planted orchards
On this side Tiber. She hath left them you
And to your heirs for ever; common pleasures
To walk abroad and recreate yourselves.
Most poets have a painter's eye for the disposition of forms and
building')--is almost hidden in a rich profusion of roses and ivy
Mr. Justice Coleridge tells us that Wordsworth dealt with
shrubs, flower-beds and lawns with the readiness of a practised
It would have grieved Shakespeare and Pope and Shenstone had they
Low and white, yet scarcely seen
Are its walls of mantling green;
Not a window lets in light
But through flowers clustering bright,
Not a glance may wander there
But it falls on something fair;
Garden choice and fairy mound
Only that no elves are found;
Winding walk and sheltered nook
For student grave and graver book,
Or a bird-like bower perchance
Fit for maiden and romance.
Another lady-poet has poured forth in verse her admiration of
Not for the glory on their heads
Those stately hill-tops wear,
Although the summer sunset sheds
Its constant crimson there:
Not for the gleaming lights that break
The purple of the twilight lake,
Half dusky and half fair,
Does that sweet valley seem to be
A sacred place on earth to me.
The influence of a moral spell
Is found around the scene,
Giving new shadows to the dell,
New verdure to the green.
With every mountain-top is wrought
The presence of associate thought,
A music that has been;
Calling that loveliness to life,
With which the inward world is rife.
His home--our English poet's home--
Amid these hills is made;
Here, with the morning, hath he come,
There, with the night delayed.
On all things is his memory cast,
For every place wherein he past,
Is with his mind arrayed,
That, wandering in a summer hour,
Asked wisdom of the leaf and flower.
The cottage and garden of the poet are not only picturesque and
When they had passed all those troubled ways,
The Garden sweet spread forth her green to shew;
The moving crystal from the fountains plays;
Fair trees, high plants, strange herbs and flowerets new,
Sunshiny hills, vales hid from Phoebus' rays,
Groves, arbours, mossie caves at once they view,
And that which beauty most, most wonder brought,
No where appear'd the Art which all this wrought.
So with the rude the polished mingled was,
That natural seem'd all and every part,
Nature would craft in counterfeiting pass,
And imitate her imitator Art:
Mild was the air, the skies were clear as glass,
The trees no whirlwind felt, nor tempest's smart,
But ere the fruit drop off, the blossom comes,
This springs, that falls, that ripeneth and this blooms.
The leaves upon the self-same bough did hide,
Beside the young, the old and ripened fig,
Here fruit was green, there ripe with vermeil side;
The apples new and old grew on one twig,
The fruitful vine her arms spread high and wide,
That bended underneath their clusters big;
The grapes were tender here, hard, young and sour,
There purple ripe, and nectar sweet forth pour.
The joyous birds, hid under green-wood shade,
Sung merry notes on every branch and bow,
The wind that in the leaves and waters plaid
With murmer sweet, now sung and whistled now;
Ceaséd the birds, the wind loud answer made:
And while they sung, it rumbled soft and low;
Thus were it hap or cunning, chance or art,
The wind in this strange musick bore his part.
With party-coloured plumes and purple bill,
A wondrous bird among the rest there flew,
That in plain speech sung love-lays loud and shrill,
Her leden was like humane language true;
So much she talkt, and with such wit and skill,
That strange it seeméd how much good she knew;
Her feathered fellows all stood hush to hear,
The gently budding rose (quoth she) behold,
That first scant peeping forth with virgin beams,
Half ope, half shut, her beauties doth upfold
In their dear leaves, and less seen, fairer seems,
And after spreads them forth more broad and bold,
Then languisheth and dies in last extreams,
Nor seems the same, that deckéd bed and bower
Of many a lady late, and paramour.
So, in the passing of a day, doth pass
The bud and blossom of the life of man,
Nor ere doth flourish more, but like the grass
Cut down, becometh wither'd, pale and wan:
O gather then the rose while time thou hast,
Short is the day, done when it scant began;
Gather the rose of love, while yet thou may'st
Loving be lov'd; embracing, be embrac'd.
He ceas'd, and as approving all he spoke,
The quire of birds their heav'nly tunes renew,
The turtles sigh'd, and sighs with kisses broke,
The fowls to shades unseen, by pairs withdrew;
It seem'd the laurel chaste, and stubborn oak,
And all the gentle trees on earth that grew,
It seem'd the land, the sea, and heav'n above,
All breath'd out fancy sweet, and sigh'd out love.
'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
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_.
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.
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
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._
Shew thee the tree, leaved with refined gold,
Whereon the fearful dragon held his seat,
That watched _the garden_ called the _Hesperides_.
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.
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
intended destruction, may serve as a specimen of the truth of the
Poets lose half the praise they should have got
Could it be known what they discreetly blot.
As I have quoted in an earlier page some unfavorable allusions to
For Phoeacia's sons
Possess not houses equalling in aught
The mansion of Alcinous, the king.
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 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_.
Whence every citizen his vase supplies--
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
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
And over him Art stryving to compayre
With Nature did an arber greene dispied
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, 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.
Thus talking, hand in hand alone they pass'd
On to their blissful bower. It was a place
Chosen by the sov'reign Planter, when he framed
All things to man's delightful use, the roof
Of thickest covert was inwoven shade,
Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew
Of firm and fragrant leaf, on either side
Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub,
Fenced up the verdant wall, each beauteous flower
Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine,
Rear'd high their flourish'd heads between, and wrought
Mosaic, under foot the violet,
Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay
Broider'd the ground, more colour'd than with stone
Of costliest emblem other creature here,
Beast, bird, insect, or worm, durst enter none,
Such was their awe of man. In shadier bower
More sacred and sequester'd, though but feign'd,
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph
Nor Faunus haunted. Here, in close recess,
With flowers, garlands, and sweet smelling herbs,
Espoused Eve deck'd first her nuptial bed,
And heavenly quires the hymenean sung
In the just published Memoirs of the late James Montgomery, of
Sheffield, it is recorded that the poet and his brother Robert, a
Men of genius who have concentrated all their powers on some one
That fairer was to seene
Than is the lily upon his stalkie greene,
assistant
Sure, a continuation for this poem could be:
  Though long hath been
The trance of Nature on the naked bier
Where ruthless Winter mocked her slumbers drear
And rent with icy hand her robes of green,
That trance is brightly broken! Glossy trees,
Resplendent meads and variegated flowers
Flash in the sun and flutter in the breeze
And now with dreaming eye the poet sees
Fair shapes of pleasure haunt romantic bowers,
And laughing streamlets chase the flying hours.
Now the bright Morning star, Day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose
Hail bounteous-May, that dost inspire
Mirth and youth and warm desire;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale do boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee and wish thee long.
Nor did the Poet of the World, William Shakespeare, hesitate to
Do observance to a morn of May.
'Tis as much impossible,
Unless we sweep 'em from the doors with cannons
To scatter 'em, _as 'tis to make 'em sleep
On May-day Morning_.
Spenser duly celebrates, in his "Shepheard's Calender,"
Thilke mery moneth of May
When love-lads masken in fresh aray,
Sicker this morowe, no longer agoe,
I saw a shole of shepeardes outgoe
With singing and shouting and iolly chere:
Before them yode a lustre tabrere,
That to the many a hornepype playd
Whereto they dauncen eche one with his mayd.
To see those folks make such iovysaunce,
Made my heart after the pype to daunce.
Tho to the greene wood they speeden hem all
To fetchen home May with their musicall;
And home they bringen in a royall throne
Crowned as king; and his queene attone
Wanderer through the wilds of air!
Freely as an angel fair
Thou dost leave the solid earth,
Man is bound to from his birth
Scarce a cubit from the grass
Springs the foot of lightest lass--
_Thou_ upon a cloud can'st leap,
And o'er broadest rivers sweep,
Climb up heaven's steepest height,
Fluttering, twinkling, in the light,
Soaring, singing, till, sweet bird,
Thou art neither seen nor heard,
Lost in azure fields afar
Like a distance hidden star,
That alone for angels bright
Breathes its music, sheds its light
Warbler of the morning's mirth!
When the gray mists rise from earth,
And the round dews on each spray
Glitter in the golden ray,
And thy wild notes, sweet though high,
Fill the wide cerulean, sky,
Is there human heart or brain
Can resist thy merry strain?
But not always soaring high,
Making man up turn his eye
Just to learn what shape of love,
Raineth music from above,--
All the sunny cloudlets fair
Floating on the azure air,
All the glories of the sky
Thou leavest unreluctantly,
Silently with happy breast
To drop into thy lowly nest.
Though the frame of man must be
Bound to earth, the soul is free,
But that freedom oft doth bring
Discontent and sorrowing.
Oh! that from each waking vision,
Gorgeous vista, gleam Elysian,
From ambition's dizzy height,
And from hope's illusive light,
Man, like thee, glad lark, could brook
Upon a low green spot to look,
And with home affections blest
Sink into as calm a nest!         D.L.R.
pleasant to hear English larks from rich clover fields singing so
Let one great day
To celebrate sports and floral play
Be set aside.
remember _Jack-in-the-Green_. Nor have I forgotten the cheerful
clatter--the brush-and-shovel music--of our little British
chimney-sweepers,--a class now almost _swept away_ themselves by
_machinery_. One May-morning in the streets of London these
With what a light heart and eager appetite did I enter the little
magician, Fancy, who supplies so many corporeal deficiencies and
Lives over each scene, and is what he beholds.
Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in
wonderful how some men pertinaciously cling to care, and argue
discontent.
Man's heart may change, but Nature's glory never;--
And while the soul's internal cell is bright,
The cloudless eye lets in the bloom and light
Of earth and heaven to charm and cheer us ever.
Though youth hath vanished, like a winding river
Lost in the shadowy woods; and the dear sight
Of native hill and nest-like cottage white,
'Mid breeze-stirred boughs whose crisp leaves gleam and quiver,
And murmur sea-like sounds, perchance no more
My homeward step shall hasten cheerily;
Yet still I feel as I have felt of yore,
And love this radiant world. Yon clear blue sky--
These gorgeous groves--this flower-enamelled floor--
Have deep enchantments for my heart and eye.
Man's heart may change, but Nature's glory never,
Though to the sullen gaze of grief the sight
Of sun illumined skies may _seem_ less bright,
Or gathering clouds less grand, yet she, as ever,
Is lovely or majestic. Though fate sever
The long linked bands of love, and all delight
Be lost, as in a sudden starless night,
The radiance may return, if He, the giver
Of peace on earth, vouchsafe the storm to still
This breast once shaken with the strife of care
Is touched with silent joy. The cot--the hill,
Beyond the broad blue wave--and faces fair,
Are pictured in my dreams, yet scenes that fill
My waking eye can save me from despair.
Man's heart may change, but Nature's glory never,--
Strange features throng around me, and the shore
Is not my own dear land. Yet why deplore
This change of doom? All mortal ties must sever.
The pang is past,--and now with blest endeavour
I check the ready tear, the rising sigh
The common earth is here--the common sky--
The common FATHER. And how high soever
O'er other tribes proud England's hosts may seem,
God's children, fair or sable, equal find
A FATHER'S love. Then learn, O man, to deem
All difference idle save of heart or mind
Thy duty, love--each cause of strife, a dream--
Thy home, the world--thy family, mankind.
countrymen in the East even more than usually unsusceptible of
The morning wakes, and through the misty air
In sickly radiance struggles--like the dream
Of sorrow-shrouded hope. O'er Thames' dull stream,
Whose sluggish waves a wealthy burden bear
From every port and clime, the pallid glare
Of early sun-light spreads. The long streets seem
Unpeopled still, but soon each path shall teem
With hurried feet, and visages of care.
And eager throngs shall meet where dusky marts
Resound like ocean-caverns, with the din
Of toil and strife and agony and sin.
Trade's busy Babel! Ah! how many hearts
By lust of gold to thy dim temples brought
In happier hours have scorned the prize they sought?
Here Passion's restless eye and spirit rude
May greet no kindred images of power
To fear or wonder ministrant. No tower,
Time-struck and tenantless, here seems to brood,
In the dread majesty of solitude,
O'er human pride departed--no rocks lower
O'er ravenous billows--no vast hollow wood
Rings with the lion's thunder--no dark bower
The crouching tiger haunts--no gloomy cave
Glitters with savage eyes! But all the scene
Is calm and cheerful. At the mild command
Of Britain's sons, the skilful and the brave,
Fair palace-structures decorate the land,
And proud ships float on Hooghly's breast serene!
Umbrageous woods, green dells, and mountains high,
And bright cascades, and wide cerulean seas,
Slumbering, or snow-wreathed by the freshening breeze,
And isles like motionless clouds upon the sky
In silent summer noons, late charmed mine eye,
Until my soul was stirred like wind-touched trees,
And passionate love and speechless ecstasies
Up-raised the thoughts in spiritual depths that lie.
Fair scenes, ye haunt me still! Yet I behold
This sultry city on the level shore
Not all unmoved; for here our fathers bold
Won proud historic names in days of yore,
And here are generous hearts that ne'er grow cold,
And many a friendly hand and open door.
described. I must give the introductory passage.
"Upon the Ganges' overflowing banks,
Where palm trees lined the shore in graceful ranks,
I stood one night amidst a merry throng
Of British youths and maidens, to behold
A witching Indian scene of light and song,
Crowds of veiled native loveliness untold,
Each streaming path poured duskily along.
The air was filled with the sweet breath of flowers,
And music that awoke the silent hours,
It was the BEARA FESTIVAL and feast
When proud and lowly, loftiest and least,
Matron and Moslem maiden pay their vows,
With impetratory and votive gift,
And to the Moslem Jonas bent their brows.
_Each brought her floating lamp of flowers_, and swift
A thousand lights along the current drift,
Till the vast bosom of the swollen stream,
Glittering and gliding onward like a dream,
Seems a wide mirror of the starry sphere
Or more as if the stars had dropt from air,
And in an earthly heaven were shining here,
And far above were, but reflected there
Still group on group, advancing to the brink,
As group on group retired link by link;
For one pale lamp that floated out of view
Five brighter ones they quickly placed anew;
At length the slackening multitudes grew less,
And the lamps floated scattered and apart.
As stars grow few when morning's footsteps press
When a slight girl, shy as the timid halt,
Not far from where we stood, her offering brought.
Singing a low sweet strain, with lips untaught.
Her song proclaimed, that 'twas not many hours
Since she had left her childhood's innocent home;
And now with Beara lamp, and wreathed flowers,
To propitiate heaven, for wedded bliss had come"
trembling hand to the stream: and was now anxiously watching its
The following lines were composed on the banks of the Hooghly at
Seated on a bank of green,
Gazing on an Indian scene,
I have dreams the mind to cheer,
And a feast for eye and ear.
At my feet a river flows,
And its broad face richly glows
With the glory of the sun,
Whose proud race is nearly run
Ne'er before did sea or stream
Kindle thus beneath his beam,
Ne'er did miser's eye behold
Such a glittering mass of gold
'Gainst the gorgeous radiance float
Darkly, many a sloop and boat,
While in each the figures seem
Like the shadows of a dream
Swiftly, passively, they glide
As sliders on a frozen tide.
Sinks the sun--the sudden night
Falls, yet still the scene is bright
Now the fire-fly's living spark
Glances through the foliage dark,
And along the dusky stream
Myriad lamps with ruddy gleam
On the small waves float and quiver,
As if upon the favored river,
And to mark the sacred hour,
Stars had fallen in a shower.
For many a mile is either shore
Illumined with a countless store
Of lustres ranged in glittering rows,
Each a golden column throws
To light the dim depths of the tide,
And the moon in all her pride
Though beauteously her regions glow,
Views a scene as fair below
The shades of evening veil the lofty spires
Of proud Benares' fanes! A thickening haze
Hangs o'er the stream. The weary boatmen raise
Along the dusky shore their crimson fires
That tinge the circling groups. Now hope inspires
Yon Hindu maid, whose heart true passion sways,
To launch on Gungas flood the glimmering rays
Of Love's frail lamp,--but, lo the light expires!
Alas! what sudden sorrow fills her breast!
No charm of life remains. Her tears deplore
A lover lost and never, never more
Shall hope's sweet vision yield her spirit rest!
The cold wave quenched the flame--an omen dread
That telleth of the faithless--_or the dead_!
Grave in the tide the Brahmin stands,
And folds his cord or twists his hands,
And tells his beads, and all unheard
Mutters a solemn mystic word
With reverence the Sudra dips,
And fervently the current sips,
That to his humbler hope conveys
A future life of happier days.
But chief do India's simple daughters
Assemble in these hallowed waters,
With vase of classic model laden
Like Grecian girl or Tuscan maiden,
Collecting thus their urns to fill
From gushing fount or trickling rill,
And still with pious fervour they
To Gunga veneration pay
And with pretenceless rite prefer,
The wishes of their hearts to her
The maid or matron, as she throws
_Champae_ or lotus, _Bel_ or rose,
Or sends the quivering light afloat
In shallow cup or paper boat,
Prays for a parent's peace and wealth
Prays for a child's success and health,
For a fond husband breathes a prayer,
For progeny their loves to share,
For what of good on earth is given
To lowly life, or hoped in heaven,
On seeing Miss Carshore's criticism I referred the subject to an
My dear Sir,
The _Beara_, strictly speaking, is a Mahomedan festival. Some of
the lower orders of the Hindus of the NW Provinces, who have
borrowed many of their customs from the Mahomedans, celebrate
the _Beara_. But it is not observed by the Hindus of Bengal, who
have a festival of their own, similar to the _Beara_. It takes
place on the evening of the _Saraswati Poojah_, when a small
piece of the bark of the Plantain Tree is fitted out with all
the necessary accompaniments of a boat, and is launched in a
private tank with a lamp. The custom is confined to the women
who follow it in their own house or in the same neighbourhood.
It is called the _Sooa Dooa Breta_.
Yours truly,
acknowledges that his countrymen in the North West Provinces have
See where, amidst the sun and showers,
The Lady of the vernal hours,
Sweet May, comes forth again with all her flowers.
solitary May-pole is still, however, occasionally discovered. "A
Would that thou couldst laugh for aye,
Merry, ever merry May!
Made of sun gleams, shade and showers
Bursting buds, and breathing flowers,
Dripping locked, and rosy vested,
Violet slippered, rainbow crested;
Girdled with the eglantine,
Festooned with the dewy vine
Merry, ever Merry May,
Would that thou could laugh for aye!
Then comes fair May, the fayrest mayde on ground,
Decked with all dainties of the season's pryde,
And throwing flowres out of her lap around.
Upon two brethren's shoulders she did ride,
The twins of Leda, which, on eyther side,
Supported her like to their Sovereign queene
Lord! how all creatures laught when her they spide,
And leapt and danced as they had ravisht beene!
And Cupid's self about her fluttred all in greene.
Here are a few lines from Herrick.
Fled are the frosts, and now the fields appeare
Re-clothed in freshe and verdant diaper;
Thawed are the snowes, and now the lusty spring
Gives to each mead a neat enameling,
The palmes put forth their gemmes, and every tree
Now swaggers in her leavy gallantry.
utilitarian and prosaic.
To the lady of the vernal hours.
Poor Keats, who was passionately fond of flowers, and everything
No crowds of nymphs, soft-voiced and young and gay
In woven baskets, bringing ears of corn,
Roses and pinks and violets, to adorn
The shrine of Flora in her early May.
At Ghent floral festivals are held twice a year when amateur and
Some of the nosegays made up by "flower-girls" in London and its
All true poets
--The sages
Who have left streaks of light athwart their pages--
Here's flowers for you,
Hot lavender, mint, savory, majoram,
The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun,
And with him rises weeping these are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think they are given
To men of middle age.
For the flowers now that, frighted, thou lett'st fall
From Dis's waggon! Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty, violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath, pale primroses,
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Great Phoebus in his strength,--a malady
Most incident to maids, bold oxlips and
The crown imperial, lilies of all kinds,
The flower de luce being one
invalid. Milton tells us of
The yellow cowslip and the _pale_ primrose
The poet in the manuscript of his _Lycidas_ had at first made the
Fletcher gives her the true parentage:--
Primrose, first born child of Ver
In Sweden they call the Primrose _The key of May_.
A primrose by the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him.
And it was nothing more.
With fairest flowers,
While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack
The flower that's like thy face, pale Primrose, nor
The azured Harebell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of Eglantine; whom not to slander,
Out-sweetened not thy breath.
Here are two more flower-passages from Shakespeare.
Here's a few flowers; but about midnight more;
The herbs that have on them cold dew o' the night
Are strewings fitt'st for graves.--Upon their faces:--
You were as flowers; now withered; even so
These herblets shall, which we upon you strow.
Sweets to the sweet. Farewell!
I hoped thou shoulds't have been my Hamlet's wife;
I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid,
And not t' have strewed thy grave.
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye vallies low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks;
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers.
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies.
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies,
For, so to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with faint surmise
Here is a nosegay of spring-flowers from the hand of Thomson:--
Fair handed Spring unbosoms every grace,
Throws out the snow drop and the crocus first,
the daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue,
And polyanthus of unnumbered dyes,
The yellow wall flower, stained with iron brown,
And lavish stock that scents the garden round,
From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed,
Anemonies, auriculas, enriched
With shining meal o'er all their velvet leaves
And full ranunculus of glowing red
Then comes the tulip race, where Beauty plays
Her idle freaks from family diffused
To family, as flies the father dust,
The varied colors run, and while they break
On the charmed eye, the exulting Florist marks
With secret pride, the wonders of his hand
Nor gradual bloom is wanting, from the bird,
First born of spring, to Summer's musky tribes
Nor hyacinth, of purest virgin white,
Low bent, and, blushing inward, nor jonquils,
Of potent fragrance, nor Narcissus fair,
As o'er the fabled fountain hanging still,
Nor broad carnations, nor gay spotted pinks;
Nor, showered from every bush, the damask rose.
Infinite varieties, delicacies, smells,
With hues on hues expression cannot paint,
The breath of Nature and her endless bloom.
Here are two bouquets of flowers from the garden of Cowper
Laburnum, rich
In streaming gold, syringa, ivory pure,
The scentless and the scented rose, this red,
And of an humbler growth, the other tall,
And throwing up into the darkest gloom
Of neighboring cypress, or more sable yew,
Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf
That the wind severs from the broken wave,
The lilac, various in array, now white,
Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set
With purple spikes pyramidal, as if
Studious of ornament yet unresolved
Which hue she most approved, she chose them all,
Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan,
But well compensating her sickly looks
With never cloying odours, early and late,
Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm
Of flowers, like flies clothing her slender rods,
That scarce a loaf appears, mezereon too,
Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset
With blushing wreaths, investing every spray,
Althaea with the purple eye, the broom
Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloy'd,
Her blossoms, and luxuriant above all
The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets,
The deep dark green of whose unvarnish'd leaf
Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more,
The bright profusion of her scatter'd stars
Th' amomum there with intermingling flowers
And cherries hangs her twigs. Geranium boasts
Her crimson honors, and the spangled beau
Ficoides, glitters bright the winter long
All plants, of every leaf, that can endure
The winter's frown, if screened from his shrewd bite,
Live their and prosper. Those Ausonia claims,
Levantine regions those, the Azores send
Their jessamine, her jessamine remote
Caffraia, foreigners from many lands,
They form one social shade as if convened
By magic summons of the Orphean lyre
There the rose unveils
Her breast of beauty, and each delicate bud
O' the season comes in turn to bloom and perish,
But first of all the violet, with an eye
Blue as the midnight heavens, the frail snowdrop,
Born of the breath of winter, and on his brow
Fixed like a full and solitary star
The languid hyacinth, and wild primrose
And daisy trodden down like modesty
The fox glove, in whose drooping bells the bee
Makes her sweet music, the Narcissus (named
From him who died for love) the tangled woodbine,
Lilacs, and flowering vines, and scented thorns,
And some from whom the voluptuous winds of June
Catch their perfumings
I take a second supply of flowers from the same hand
Here, this rose
(This one half blown) shall be my Maia's portion,
For that like it her blush is beautiful
And this deep violet, almost as blue
As Pallas' eye, or thine, Lycemnia,
I'll give to thee for like thyself it wears
Its sweetness, never obtruding. For this lily
Where can it hang but it Cyane's breast?
And yet twill wither on so white a bed,
If flowers have sense of envy.--It shall be
Amongst thy raven tresses, Cytheris,
Like one star on the bosom of the night
The cowslip and the yellow primrose,--they
Are gone, my sad Leontia, to their graves,
And April hath wept o'er them, and the voice
Of March hath sung, even before their deaths
The dirge of those young children of the year
But here is hearts ease for your woes. And now,
The honey suckle flower I give to thee,
And love it for my sake, my own Cyane
It hangs upon the stem it loves, as thou
Hast clung to me, through every joy and sorrow,
It flourishes with its guardian growth, as thou dost,
And if the woodman's axe should droop the tree,
The woodbine too must perish.
Then the flowers on all their beds--
How the sparklers glance their heads,
Daisies with their pinky lashes
And the marigolds broad flashes,
Hyacinth with sapphire bell
Curling backward, and the swell
Of the rose, full lipped and warm,
Bound about whose riper form
Her slender virgin train are seen
In their close fit caps of green,
Lilacs then, and daffodillies,
And the nice leaved lesser lilies
Shading, like detected light,
Their little green-tipt lamps of white;
Blissful poppy, odorous pea,
With its wing up lightsomely;
Balsam with his shaft of amber,
Mignionette for lady's chamber,
And genteel geranium,
With a leaf for all that come;
And the tulip tricked out finest,
And the pink of smell divinest;
And as proud as all of them
Bound in one, the garden's gem
Hearts-ease, like a gallant bold
In his cloth of purple and gold.
Then he took up his garland, and did show
What every flower, as country people hold,
Did signify; and how all, ordered thus,
Expressed his grief: and, to my thoughts, did read
The prettiest lecture of his country art
That could be wished.
_Beaumont's and Fletcher's "Philaster."_
There from richer banks
Culling out flowers, which in a learned order
Do become characters, whence they disclose
Their mutual meanings, garlands then and nosegays
Being framed into epistles.
_Cartwright's "Love's Covenant."_
An exquisite invention this,
Worthy of Love's most honied kiss,
This art of writing _billet-doux_
In buds and odours and bright hues,
In saying all one feels and thinks
In clever daffodils and pinks,
Uttering (as well as silence may,)
The sweetest words the sweetest way.
Yet, no--not words, for they
But half can tell love's feeling;
Sweet flowers alone can say
What passion fears revealing.
A once bright rose's withered leaf--
A towering lily broken--
Oh, these may paint a grief
No words could e'er have spoken.
By all those token flowers that tell
What words can ne'er express so well.
A mystic language, perfect in each part.
Made up of bright hued thoughts and perfumed speeches.
Fairies use flowers for their charactery.
Sir Walter Scott tells us that:--
The myrtle bough bids lovers live--
"The meed of mighty conquerors and poets sage."
fragrance of friendship.
The second rule is, that the opposite of a particular sentiment
From eleven to twenty, berries are added to the ten leaves thus--
Rose cheeked Adonis hied him to the chase
Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn
Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost!
What face remains alive that's worth the viewing?
Whose tongue is music now? What can'st thou boast
Of things long since, or any thing ensuing?
The flowers are sweet, their colors fresh and trim,
But true sweet beauty lived and died with him.
The course of true love never does run smooth.
By this the boy that by her side lay killed
Was melted into vapour from her sight,
And in his blood that on the ground lay spilled,
A purple flower sprang up, checquered with white,
Resembling well his pale cheeks, and the blood
Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.
She bows her head, the new sprung flower to smell,
Comparing it to her Adonis' breath,
And says, within her bosom it shall dwell
Since he himself is reft from her by death;
She crops the stalk, and in the branch appears
Green dropping sap which she compares to tears.
translated by Eusden.
Then on the blood sweet nectar she bestows,
The scented blood in little bubbles rose;
Little as rainy drops, which fluttering fly,
Borne by the winds, along a lowering sky,
Short time ensued, till where the blood was shed,
A flower began to rear its purple head
Such, as on Punic apples is revealed
Or in the filmy rind but half concealed,
Still here the fate of lonely forms we see,
_So sudden fades the sweet Anemone_.
The feeble stems to stormy blasts a prey
Their sickly beauties droop, and pine away
The winds forbid the flowers to flourish long
Which owe to winds their names in Grecian song.
The concluding couplet alludes to the Grecian name of the flower
Youth, like a thin anemone, displays
His silken leaf, and in a morn decays.
Horace Smith speaks of
The coy anemone that ne'er discloses
Her lips until they're blown on by the wind
Flower! The laurel still may shed
Brightness round the victor's head,
And the rose in beauty's hair
Still its festal glory wear;
And the willow-leaves droop o'er
Brows which love sustains no more
But by living rays refined,
Thou the trembler of the wind,
Thou, the spiritual flower
Sentient of each breeze and shower,
Thou, rejoicing in the skies
And transpierced with all their dyes;
Breathing-vase with light o'erflowing,
Gem-like to thy centre flowing,
Thou the Poet's type shall be
Flower of soul, Anemone!
Till Appulus with a dishonest air
And gross behaviour, banished thence the fair.
The bold buffoon, whene'er they tread the green,
Their motion mimics, but with jest obscene;
Loose language oft he utters; but ere long
A bark in filmy net-work binds his tongue;
Thus changed, a base wild olive he remains;
The shrub the coarseness of the clown retains.
Immodest words admit of no defense,
For want of decency is want of sense,
Thick new-born Violets a soft carpet spread,
And clustering Lotos swelled the rising bed,
And sudden _Hyacinths_ the turf bestrow,
And flaming Crocus made the mountains glow
Milton gives a similar couch to Adam and Eve.
Flowers were the couch
And _Hyacinth_, earth's freshest, softest lap
His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule, and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung,
The youths whose locks divinely spreading
Like vernal hyacinths in sullen hue
Sir William Jones describes--
The fragrant hyacinths of Azza's hair,
That wanton with the laughing summer air.
A similar allusion may also be found in prose.
"It was the exquisitely fair queen Helen, whose jacinth hair,
receiving richness."--_Sir Philip Sidney_
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.
Drummond had before spoken of
That sweet flower that bears
In sanguine spots the tenor of our woes
Hurdis speaks of:
The melancholy Hyacinth, that weeps
All night, and never lifts an eye all day.
As poets feigned from Ajax's streaming blood
Arose, with grief inscribed, a mournful flower.
Keats has the following allusion to the old story of Hyacinthus,
Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent
On either side; pitying the sad death
Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath
Of Zephyr slew him,--Zephyr penitent,
Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament
Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.
Alphonse Karr, the eloquent French writer, whose "_Tour Round my
association:--
Would that the little flowers that grow could live
Conscious of half the pleasure that they give
Foolish Narcisse, that likes the watery shore
_Emilia_--This garden hath a world of pleasure in it,
What flower is this?
_Servant_--'Tis called Narcissus, Madam.
_Em._--That was a fair boy certain, but a fool
To love himself, were there not maids,
Or are they all hard hearted?
_Ser_--That could not be to one so fair.
Ben Jonson touches the true moral of the fable very forcibly.
'Tis now the known disease
That beauty hath, to hear too deep a sense
Of her own self conceived excellence
Oh! had'st thou known the worth of Heaven's rich gift,
Thou would'st have turned it to a truer use,
And not (with starved and covetous ignorance)
Pined in continual eyeing that bright gem
The glance whereof to others had been more
Than to thy famished mind the wide world's store.
Gay's version of the fable is as follows:
Here young Narcissus o'er the fountain stood
And viewed his image in the crystal flood
The crystal flood reflects his lovely charms
And the pleased image strives to meet his arms.
No nymph his inexperienced breast subdued,
Echo in vain the flying boy pursued
Himself alone, the foolish youth admires
And with fond look the smiling shade desires,
O'er the smooth lake with fruitless tears he grieves,
His spreading fingers shoot in verdant leaves,
Through his pale veins green sap now gently flows,
And in a short lived flower his beauty glows
--The stern Achilles
Stalked through a mead of daffodillies"
Who can unpitying see the flowery race
Shed by the morn then newflushed bloom resign,
Before the parching beam? So fade the fair,
When fever revels in their azure veins
But one, _the lofty follower of the sun_,
Sad when he sits shuts up her yellow leaves,
Drooping all night, and when he warm return,
Points her enamoured bosom to his ray
THE SUN-FLOWER (_Helianthus_) was once the fair nymph Clytia.
sweetest ballads.
Oh! the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to its close
As the sun flower turns on her god when he sets
The same look that she turned when he rose
The weed is green, when grey the wall,
And blossoms rise where turrets fall
Why this flower is now called so
List sweet maids and you shall know
Understand this firstling was
Once a brisk and bonny lass
Kept as close as Danae was
Who a sprightly springal loved,
And to have it fully proved,
Up she got upon a wall
Tempting down to slide withal,
But the silken twist untied,
So she fell, and bruised and died
Love in pity of the deed
And her loving, luckless speed,
Turned her to the plant we call
In the season of the tulip cup
When blossoms clothe the trees,
How sweet to throw the lattice up
And scent thee on the breeze;
The butterfly is then abroad,
The bee is on the wing,
And on the hawthorn by the road
The linnets sit and sing.
The Jessamine, with which the Queen of flowers,
To charm her god adorns his favorite bowers,
Which brides, by the plain hand of neatness dressed--
Unenvied rivals!--wear upon their breast;
Sweet as the incense of the morn, and chaste
As the pure zone which circles Dian's waist.
marriage dowry.
For here the rose expands
Her paradise of leaves.
The ROSE, (_Rosa_) the Queen of Flowers, was given by Cupid to
Harpocrates, the God of Silence, as a bribe, to prevent him from
betraying the amours of Venus. A rose suspended from the ceiling
White as the native rose, before the change
Which Venus' blood did on her leaves impress.
Milton says that in Paradise were,
Flowers of all hue, and _without thorns the rose_.
To sinless Eve's admiring sight
The rose expanded snowy white,
When in the ecstacy of bliss
She gave the modest flower a kiss,
And instantaneous, lo! it drew
From her red lip its blushing hue;
While from her breath it sweetness found,
And spread new fragrance all around.
At that last sunset seen in Paradise,
When all the westering clouds flashed out in throngs
Of sudden angel-faces, face by face,
All hushed and solemn, as a thought of God
Held them suspended,--was I not, that hour
The lady of the world, princess of life,
Mistress of feast and favour? _Could I touch
A Rose with my white hand, but it became
Redder at once?_
Leigh Hunt has a pleasant line about the rose:
And what a red mouth hath the rose, the woman of the flowers!
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk
That in their summer beauty kissed each other.
Came and saluted; never man before
More blest, nor like this kiss hath been another
But when two dangling cherries kist each other;
Nor ever beauties, like, met at such closes,
But in the kisses of two damask roses.
Here is something in the same spirit from Crashaw.
So have I seen
Two silken sister-flowers consult and lay
Their bashful cheeks together; newly they
Peeped from their buds, showed like the garden's eyes
Scarce waked, like was the crimson of their joys,
Like were the tears they wept, so like that one
Seemed but the other's kind reflection.
If Jove would give the leafy bowers
A queen for all their world of flowers
The Rose would be the choice of Jove,
And blush the queen of every grove
Sweetest child of weeping morning,
Gem the vest of earth adorning,
Eye of gardens, light of lawns,
Nursling of soft summer dawns
June's own earliest sigh it breathes,
Beauty's brow with lustre wreathes,
And to young Zephyr's warm caresses
Spreads abroad its verdant tresses,
Till blushing with the wanton's play
Its cheeks wear e'en a redder ray.
The Angel of the Flowers one day,
Beneath a rose tree sleeping lay,
The spirit to whom charge is given
To bathe young buds in dews of heaven,
Awaking from his light repose
The Angel whispered to the Rose
"O fondest object of my care
Still fairest found where all is fair,
For the sweet shade thou givest to me
Ask what thou wilt 'tis granted thee"
"Then" said the Rose, "with deepened glow
On me another grace bestow."
The spirit paused in silent thought
What grace was there the flower had not?
'Twas but a moment--o'er the rose
A veil of moss the Angel throws,
And robed in Nature's simple weed,
Could there a flower that rose exceed?
expenditure at great festivals, but I suppose that no millionaire
I shall close the poetical quotations on the Rose with one of
Shakespeare's sonnets.
O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses;
But for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet Roses do not so;
Of then sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth.
There is a story about the origin of attar of Roses. The Princess
Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower,
The Periwinkle trailed its wreaths,
_And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes._
Mr. J.L. Merritt, has some complimentary lines on this flower.
The Periwinkle with its fan-like leaves
All nicely levelled, is a lovely flower
Whose dark wreath, myrtle like, young Flora weaves;
There's none more rare
Nor aught more meet to deck a fairy's bower
Or grace her hair.
Sweet marjoram, with her like, _sweet basil_, rare for smell.
Tulips, like the ruddy evening streaked.
What crouds the rich Divan to-day
With turbaned heads, of every hue
Bowing before that veiled and awful face
Like Tulip-beds of different shapes and dyes,
Bending beneath the invisible west wind's sighs?
With all his phlegm, it broke a Dutchman's heart,
At a vast price, with one loved root to part.
catalogue at 200 guineas.
Hold each strange tale devoutly true.
For as the poet says:
What though no credit doubting wits may give,
The fair and innocent shall still believe.
Prevailing poet! whose undoubting mind
Believed the magic wonders that he sung.
All nature indeed is full of mystery to the imaginative.
And visions as poetic eyes avow
Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough.
The PANSY (_víola trîcolor_) commonly called _Hearts-ease_, or
_Love-in-idleness_, or _Herb-Trinity_ (_Flos Trinitarium_), or
That very time I saw (but thou couldst not)
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all armed, a certain aim he took
At a fair Vestal, throned by the west;
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts.
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon--
And the imperial votaress passed on
In maiden meditation fancy free,
Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell.
It fell upon _a little western flowers,
Before milk white, now purple with love's wound--
And maidens call it_ LOVE IN IDLENESS
Fetch me that flower, the herb I showed thee once,
The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid,
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
Fetch me this herb and be thou here again,
Ere the leviathan can swim a league.
_Midsummer Night's Dream._
Elle ne vit qu'un jour, et ne plait qu'un moment.
(She lives but for a day and pleases but for a moment)
"Ses qualities surpassent ses charmes."
Your qualities surpass your charms.
The vervain--
That hind'reth witches of their will.
Oft alone in nooks remote
_We meet it like a pleasant thought
When such is wanted._
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there's a sun that sets
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are Violets,
They will have a place in story:
There's a flower that shall be mine,
'Tis the little Celandine.
acquaintance; a withered thorn is weighed down with a heap of
Shelley calls Daisies "those pearled Arcturi of the earth"--"the
constellated flower that never sets."
Of all the floures in the mede
Then love I most these floures white and red,
Such that men callen Daisies in our town,
To them I have so great affectión.
As I sayd erst, when comen is the Maie,
That in my bedde there dawneth me no daie
That I nam up and walking in the mede
To see this floure agenst the Sunne sprede,
When it up riseth early by the morrow
That blisfull sight softeneth all my sorrow.
Wee, modest, crimson tippéd flower
Wee, modest, crimson tippéd flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour,
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem,
To spare thee now is past my pow'r,
Thou bonnie gem.
Alas! its no thy neobor sweet,
The bonnie lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet
Wi' speckled breast,
When upward springing, blythe, to greet
The purpling east
Cauld blew the bitter biting north
Upon thy early, humble, birth,
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm,
Scarce reared above the patient earth
Thy tender form
The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,
High sheltering woods and wa's maun shield,
But thou beneath the random bield
O' clod or stane,
Adorns the histie stibble field
Unseen, alane.
There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawye bosom sun ward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise,
But now the share up tears thy bed,
And low thou lies!
Such is the fate of artless Maid,
Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betrayed,
And guileless trust,
Till she, like thee, all soiled is laid
Low i' the dust.
Such is the fate of simple Bard,
On Life's rough ocean luckless starred!
Unskilful he to note the card
Of prudent lore,
Till billows rage, and gales blow hard
And whelm him o'er!
Such fate to suffering worth is given
Who long with wants and woes has striven
By human pride or cunning driven
To misery's brink,
Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven,
He, ruined, sink!
Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate,
That fate is thine--no distant date;
Stern Ruin's plough-share drives elate,
Full on thy bloom;
Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight
Shall be thy doom.
There is a flower, a little flower,
With silver crest and golden eye,
That welcomes every changing hour,
And weathers every sky.
The prouder beauties of the field
In gay but quick succession shine,
Race after race their honours yield,
They flourish and decline.
But this small flower, to Nature dear,
While moons and stars their courses run,
Wreathes the whole circle of the year,
Companion of the sun.
It smiles upon the lap of May,
To sultry August spreads its charms,
Lights pale October on his way,
And twines December's arms.
The purple heath and golden broom,
On moory mountains catch the gale,
O'er lawns the lily sheds perfume,
The violet in the vale.
But this bold floweret climbs the hill,
Hides in the forest, haunts the glen,
Plays on the margin of the rill,
Peeps round the fox's den.
Within the garden's cultured round
It shares the sweet carnation's bed;
And blooms on consecrated ground
In honour of the dead.
The lambkin crops its crimson gem,
The wild-bee murmurs on its breast,
The blue-fly bends its pensile stem,
Light o'er the sky-lark's nest.
'Tis FLORA'S page,--in every place,
In every season fresh and fair;
It opens with perennial grace.
And blossoms everywhere.
On waste and woodland, rock and plain,
Its humble buds unheeded rise;
The rose has but a summer-reign;
The DAISY never dies.
Thrice-welcome, little English flower!
To this resplendent hemisphere
Where Flora's giant offsprings tower
In gorgeous liveries all the year;
Thou, only thou, art little here
Like worth unfriended and unknown,
Yet to my British heart more dear
Than all the torrid zone.
My last poetical tribute to the Daisy shall be three stanzas from
With little here to do or see
Of things that in the great world be,
Sweet Daisy! oft I talk to thee,
For thou art worthy,
Thou unassuming Common-place
Of Nature, with that homely face,
And yet with something of a grace,
Which Love makes for thee!
If stately passions in me burn,
And one chance look to Thee should turn,
I drink out of an humbler urn
A lowlier pleasure;
The homely sympathy that heeds
The common life, our nature breeds;
A wisdom fitted to the needs
Of hearts at leisure.
When, smitten by the morning ray,
I see thee rise, alert and gay,
Then, cheerful Flower! my spirits play
With kindred gladness;
And when, at dusk, by dews opprest
Thou sink'st, the image of thy rest
Hath often eased my pensive breast
Of careful sadness.
--Yon swelling downs where the sweet air stirs
The harebells, and where prickly furze
Buds lavish gold.
_Keat's Endymion_.
Fair maidens, I'll sing you a song,
I'll tell of the bonny wild flower,
Whose blossoms so yellow, and branches so long,
O'er moor and o'er rough rocky mountains are flung
Far away from trim garden and bower
The PRICKLY GORSE or Goss or Furze, (_ulex_) I cannot omit to
notice, because it was the plant which of all others most struck
The common, over-grown with fern, and rough
With prickly gorse, that shapeless and deformed
And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom
And decks itself with ornaments of gold,
Yields no unpleasing ramble.
And what more noble than the vernal furze
With golden caskets hung?
vallies_) is sometimes alive with its lustre.
If I dream of the past, at fair Fancy's command,
Up-floats from the blue sea thy small sunny land!
O'er thy green hills, sweet Jersey, the fresh breezes blow,
And silent and warm is the Vallée des Vaux!
There alone have I loitered 'mid blossoms of gold,
And forgot that the great world was crowded and cold,
Nor believed that a land of enchantment could show
A vale more divine than the Vallée des Vaux.
A few scattered cots, like white clouds in the sky,
Or like still sails at sea when the light breezes die,
And a mill with its wheel in the brook's silver glow,
Form thy beautiful hamlet, sweet Vallée des Vaux!
As the brook prattled by like an infant at play,
And each wave as it passed stole a moment away,
I thought how serenely a long life would flow,
By the sweet little brook in the Vallée des Vaux.
I'll seek the shaggy fern-clad hill
And watch, 'mid murmurs muttering stern,
The seed departing from the fern
Ere wakeful demons can convey
The wonder-working charm away.
We have the receipt of fern-seed; we walk invisible,
_Shakespeare's Henry IV. Part I_.
--Had you Gyges' ring,
_Or the herb that gives invisibility_.
Ben Jonson makes a similar allusion to it:
I had
No medicine, sir, to go invisible,
_No fern-seed in my pocket_.
Pope puts a branch of spleen-wort, a species of fern, (_Asplenium
influences in the Cave of Spleen.
Safe passed the gnome through this fantastic band
A branch of healing spleen-wort in his hand.
indefatigable collector of ferns, obligingly presented me with a
specimen of every variety that he had discovered in the hills and
I stand upon the mountain's brow--
I drink the cool fresh, mountain breeze--
I see thy little town below,
Thy villas, hedge-rows, fields and trees,
And hail thee with exultant glow,
A cloud had settled on my heart--
My frame had borne perpetual pain--
I yearned and panted to depart
From dread Bengala's sultry plain--
Fate smiled,--Disease withholds his dart--
I breathe the breath of life again!
With lightened heart, elastic tread,
Almost with youth's rekindled flame,
I roam where loveliest scenes outspread
Raise thoughts and visions none could name,
Save those on whom the Muses shed
A spell, a dower of deathless fame.
I _feel_, but oh! could ne'er _pourtray_,
Sweet Isle! thy charms of land and wave,
The bowers that own no winter day,
The brooks where timid wild birds lave,
The forest hills where insects gay
Mimic the music of the brave!
I see from this proud airy height
A lovely Lilliput below!
Ships, roads, groves, gardens, mansions white,
And trees in trimly ordered row,
Present almost a toy like sight,
A miniature scene, a fairy show!
But lo! beyond the ocean stream,
That like a sheet of silver lies,
As glorious as a poet's dream
The grand Malayan mountains rise,
And while their sides in sunlight beam
Their dim heads mingle with the skies.
Men laugh at bards who live _in clouds_--
The clouds _beneath_ me gather now,
Or gliding slow in solemn crowds,
Or singly, touched with sunny glow,
Like mystic shapes in snowy shrouds,
Or lucid veils on Beauty's brow.
While all around the wandering eye
Beholds enchantments rich and rare,
Of wood, and water, earth, and sky
A panoramic vision fair,
The dyal breathes his liquid sigh,
And magic floats upon the air!
Oh! lovely and romantic Isle!
How cold the heart thou couldst not please!
Thy very dwellings seem to smile
Like quiet nests mid summer trees!
I leave thy shores--but weep the while--
Thus some bring leaves of henna to imbue
The fingers' ends of a bright roseate hue,
So bright, that in the mirror's depth they seem
Like tips of coral branches in the stream.
diameter.
following passage from D'Israeli's _Curiosities of Literature_:--
See on that floweret's velvet breast,
How close the busy vagrant lies?
His thin-wrought plume, his downy breast,
Th' ambrosial gold that swells his thighs.
Perhaps his fragrant load may bind
His limbs;--we'll set the captive free--
I sought the living bee to find,
And found the picture of a bee,'
beautiful! Its price!'--'A guinea; there was another left.' The
A deed of grace--a graceful gift--and graceful too the giver!
Rude gods in brass or gold enchant an untaught devotee--
Fair marble shapes, rich paintings old, are Art's idolatry;
The giver and the gift seem one, and thou thyself art nigh
When this glory of the garden greets thy lover's raptured eye.
There's rosemary--that's for remembrance:
Pray you, love, remember.
There's rosemarie; the Arabians Justifie
(Physitions of exceeding perfect skill)
It comforteth the brain and memory.
So lovely seemed
That landscape, and of pure, now purer air,
Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair. Now gentle gales
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north east winds blow
Sabean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the blest, with such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
Cheered with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles.
_Lewis_    Pray take a piece of Rosemary
_Miramont_ I'll wear it,
But for the lady's sake, and none of your's!
_Beaumont and Fletcher's "Elder Brother."_
Rosemary is for remembrance
Between us daie and night,
Wishing that I might alwaies have
You present in my sight.
The poem in which these lines are found, is entitled, '_A Nosegay
A flower which once
In Paradise, fast by the tree of life
Began to bloom,
Venturous harbinger of spring
And pensive monitor of fleeting years,
usitatissimum.
Indian Cupid. It is particularly sacred to Krishna.
DRONA.--A white flower with a very slight smell.
_kamini_ tree is frequently used as a garden hedge.
appearance.
KRISHNA KELI (_Mirabilis Jalapa_.)--A small tulip shaped yellow
SURYJA MANI (_Hibiscus Phoeniceus_).--A small red flower.
How well the skilful gardener drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial new!
Where, from above, the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run:
And, as it works, th'industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we:
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers?
Milton's notation of time--"_at shut of evening flowers_," has a
commencement and the close of day.
The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch--
Than we will ship him hence.
Fare thee well at once!
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near
And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
But look! The morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill:--
Break we our watch up.
_Light thickens_, and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood.
Such picturesque notations of time as these, are in the works of
Shakespeare, as thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride;
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons have I seen;
Three April's perfumes in three hot Junes burned
Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green.
Till morning dawn and Lucifer withdraw
His beamy chariot, let not the loud bell
And ere the sun with mid-day fervor glow,
When every broom-bush opes her yellow flower,
Let thy black laborers from their toil desist:
Nor till the broom her every petal lock,
Let the loud bell recal them to the hoe,
But when the jalap her bright tint displays,
When the solanum fills her cup with dew,
And crickets, snakes and lizards gin their coil,
Let them find shelter in their cane-thatched huts.
'Twas a lovely thought to mark the hours
As they floated in light away
By the opening and the folding flowers
That laugh to the summer day.
The seasons may be marked in a similar manner by their floral
"Many species of flowers are admirable barometers. Most of the
"I believe" says Richter "the flower clock of Linnaeus, in Upsal
From the eyes of the unfortunate man, who like the jalap plant
I could never know when it was two o'clock, because at that time,
--but perforated sore, and dull'd in holes
By worms voracious, eating through and through.
This land is not my father land,
And yet I love it--for the hand
Of God hath left its mark sublime
On nature's face in every clime--
Though from home and friends we part,
Nature and the human heart
Still may soothe the wanderer's care--
And his God is every where
Beneath BENGALA'S azure skies,
No vallies sink, no green hills rise,
Like those the vast sea billows make--
The land is level as a lake
But, oh, what giants of the wood
Wave their wide arms, or calmly brood
Each o'er his own deep rounded shade
When noon's fierce sun the breeze hath laid,
And all is still. On every plain
How green the sward, or rich the grain!
In jungle wild and garden trim,
And open lawn and covert dim,
What glorious shrubs and flowerets gay,
Bright buds, and lordly beasts of prey!
How prodigally Gunga pours
Her wealth of waves through verdant shores
O'er which the sacred peepul bends,
And oft its skeleton lines extends
Of twisted root, well laved and bare,
Half in water, half in air!
Fair scenes! where breeze and sun diffuse
The sweetest odours, fairest hues--
Where brightest the bright day god shows,
And where his gentle sister throws
Her softest spell on silent plain,
And stirless wood, and slumbering main--
Where the lucid starry sky
Opens most to mortal eye
The wide and mystic dome serene
Meant for visitants unseen,
A dream like temple, air built hall,
Where spirits pure hold festival!
Fair scenes! whence envious Art might steal
More charms than fancy's realms reveal--
Where the tall palm to the sky
Lifts its wreath triumphantly--
And the bambu's tapering bough
Loves its flexile arch to throw--
Where sleeps the favored lotus white,
On the still lake's bosom bright--
Where the champac's blossoms shine,
Offerings meet for Brahma's shrine,
While the fragrance floateth wide
O'er velvet lawn and glassy tide--
Where the mangoe tope bestows
Night at noon day--cool repose,
Neath burning heavens--a hush profound
Breathing o'er the shaded ground--
Where the medicinal neem,
Of palest foliage, softest gleam,
And the small leafed tamarind
Tremble at each whispering wind--
And the long plumed cocoas stand
Like the princes of the land,
Near the betel's pillar slim,
With capital richly wrought and trim--
And the neglected wild sonail
Drops her yellow ringlets pale--
And light airs summer odours throw
From the bala's breast of snow--
Where the Briarean banyan shades
The crowded ghat, while Indian maids,
Untouched by noon tide's scorching rays,
Lave the sleek limb, or fill the vase
With liquid life, or on the head
Replace it, and with graceful tread
And form erect, and movement slow,
Back to their simple dwellings go--
Neatly smoothed with wetted hand--
Straw roofs, yellow once and gay,
Turned by time and tempest gray--]
Where the merry minahs crowd
Unbrageous haunts, and chirrup loud--
And shrilly talk the parrots green
'Midst the thick leaves dimly seen--
And through the quivering foliage play,
Light as buds, the squirrels gay,
Quickly as the noontide beams
Dance upon the rippled streams--
Where the pariah howls with fear,
If the white man passeth near--
Where the beast that mocks our race
With taper finger, solemn face,
In the cool shade sits at ease
Calm and grave as Socrates--
Where the sluggish buffaloe
Wallows in mud--and huge and slow,
Like massive cloud of sombre van,
Moves the land leviathan--
Where beneath the jungle's screen
Close enwoven, lurks unseen
The couchant tiger--and the snake
His sly and sinuous way doth make
Through the rich mead's grassy net,
Like a miniature rivulet--
Where small white cattle, scattered wide,
Browse, from dawn to even tide--
Where the river watered soil
Scarce demands the ryot's toil--
And the rice field's emerald light
Out vies Italian meadows bright,--
Where leaves of every shape and dye,
And blossoms varied as the sky,
The fancy kindle,--fingers fair
That never closed on aught but air--
Hearts, that never heaved a sigh--
Wings, that never learned to fly--
Cups, that ne'er went table round--
Bells, that never rang with sound--
Golden crowns, of little worth--
Silver stars, that strew the earth--
Filagree fine and curious braid,
Breathed, not labored, grown, not made--
Tresses like the beams of morn
Without a thought of triumph worn--
Tongues that prate not--many an eye
Untaught midst hidden things to pry--
Brazen trumpets, long and bright,
That never summoned to the fight--
Shafts, that never pierced a side--
And plumes that never waved with pride;--
Scarcely Art a shape may know
But Nature here that shape can show.
Through this soft air, o'er this warm sod,
Stern deadly Winter never trod;
The woods their pride for centuries wear,
And not a living branch is bare;
Each field for ever boasts its bowers,
And every season brings its flowers.
We all "uphold Adam's profession": we are all gardeners, either
Live in description and look green in song,
associated with ideas of earthly felicity.
And oh, if there be an Elysium on earth,
It is this, it is this!
In visions so profuse of pleasantness--
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
There is this much of poetical sensibility--of a sense of natural
That voice yet speaketh, heed it well--
But not in tones of wrath it chideth,
The moss rose, and the lily smell
Of God--in them his voice abideth.
There is a blessing on the spot
The poor man decks--the sun delighteth
To smile upon each homely plot,
And why? The voice of God inviteth.
God knows that he is worshipped there,
The chaliced cowslip's graceful bending
Is mute devotion, and the air
Is sweet with incense of her lending.
The primrose, aye the children's pet,
Pale bride, yet proud of its uprooting,
The crocus, snowdrop, violet
And sweet-briar with its soft leaves shooting.
There nestles each--a Preacher each--
(Oh heart of man! be slow to harden)
Each cottage flower in sooth doth teach
God walketh with us in the garden.
The exploit of strength, dexterity and speed
To him nor vanity, nor joy could bring.
"It is not easy," observes Lord Kames, "to suppress a degree of
together? To attempt to exclude art--or even, the appearance of
Consult the genius of the place in all.
peasant's.
'Tis Nature still, 'tis nature methodized:
Or in other words:
Nature to advantage dressed.
Long passages that lead to nothing.
That in _trim_ gardens takes his pleasure.
construction of the dwelling and the flowing curves and wild but
deficient in freshness and vigor.
These likewise mote be seen on every side
The shapely box, of all its branching pride
Ungently shorn, and, with preposterous skill
To various beasts, and birds of sundry quill
Transformed, and human shapes of monstrous size.
Also other wonders of the sportive shears
Fair Nature misadorning; there were found
Globes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piers
With spouting urns and budding statues crowned;
And horizontal dials on the ground
In living box, by cunning artists traced,
And galleys trim, or on long voyage bound,
But by their roots there ever anchored fast.
Who can impress the forest? Bid the tree
Unfix his earth-bound root?
The Indian tree, whose branches downward bent,
Take root again, a boundless canopy--
The fig tree, not that kind for fruit renowned,
But such as at this day, to Indians known
In Malabar or Deccan, spreads her arms
Branching so broad and long, a pillared shade,
High over arched, and echoing walks between
There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,
Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds
At loop holes cut through the thickest shade those leaves,
They gathered, broad as Amazonian taige;
And with what skill they had together sewed,
To gird their waste.
mentioned.
I regret that it should have been deemed necessary to make stupid
--like the verbum Graecum
Words that should only be said upon holidays,
When one has nothing else to do.
ill-arranged, and tightly bound treasures of the parterre for the
If a lovely woman arranging the nosegays and flower-vases, in her
Eve separate he spies.
Veil'd in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood,
Half spied, so thick the roses blushing round
About her glow'd, oft stooping to support
Each flower of slender stalk, whose head, though gay,
Carnation, purple, azure, or speck'd with gold,
Hung drooping unsustain'd; them she upstays
Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while
Herself, though fairest unsupported flower,
From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh.
Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed
Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm;
Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen,
Among thick woven arborets, and flowers
Imborder'd on each bank, the hand of Eve
_Paradise Lost. Book IX_.
Than is the lily on his stalkie green;
And Dryden, in his modernized version of the old poet, says,
At every turn she made a little stand,
And thrust among the thorns her lily hand
To draw the rose.
Eve's roses were without thorns--
"And without thorn the rose,"
Of the nice conduct of a clouded cane,
amuse themselves with switching off their lovely heads. "That's
And 'tis my wish, and over was my way,
To let all flowers live freely, and so die.
Oh, spare my flower, my gentle flower,
The slender creature of a day,
Let it bloom out its little hour,
And pass away.
So soon its fleeting charms must lie
Decayed, unnoticed and o'erthrown,
Oh, hasten not its destiny,
Too like thine own.
BAT (_Ficus indica_).--Is the Indian Banian tree, supposed to be
TU'LSI (_Ocymum_).--The Indian Basil, of which there are several
attempted.
The HERON'S BILL, Erodium; the STORK'S BILL, Pelargonium; and the
The _Tooth-leaved Stork's bill_, P. denticulatum, is not a free
flowerer, but may with care be made to bloom in April.
germinate.
_Culture_. Most kinds are rapid and luxurious growers, and it is
_Soil, &c._ A strong rich loamy soil is preferable, having a
The _Florence Iris_, I. florentina, _Ueersa_, is a large variety,
The LOBELIA is a brilliant class of flowers which may be greatly
improved by careful cultivation.
_Soil, &c._--A moist, sandy soil is requisite for them, the small
In _size_ although of small estimation if the other qualities are
The PINK, Dianthus, _Kurunful_, is a well known species of great
variety, and acknowledged beauty.
The _Carnation_, D. caryophyilus, _Gul kurunful_, is by this time
The VIOLET, Viola, _Puroos_, is a class containing many beautiful
The _Dog's Violet_, V. canina, is also indigenous in the hills.
varieties, a few of which only have been found here.
_Soil, &c._--Loam and old leaf mould, or peat with a very small
_Propagation_ is exceedingly easy with each of the last named two
similarity, of the following general rules:--
_Propagation_.--Although some few will admit of other modes of
The _Poet's Narcissus_, N. poeticus, _Moozhan, zureenkuda_ is the
The CROCUS, Crocus lutens, having no native name, has yet, it is
gathered by them.
_Propagation_--is by offsets.
The _Belladonna Lily_. A: belladonna is of moderately high stem,
It is only necessary to mention a few of these, as the curious in
The BROWALLIA, of two lauds, both pretty and interesting plants;
originally from South America.
The STOCK, Mathiola, is a very popular plant, and deserves more
extensive cultivation in this country.
The _Chinese Hibiscus_, H rosa sinensis, _Jooua, jasoon, jupa_,
The SWEET PEA, Lathyrus odoralus, is not usually cultivated with
otherwise than destroy the plants placed beneath them.
inhabitants of these regions:--
Rosa involucrata,
--  semperflorens,
--  microphylla,
Rosa centiflora,
--  glandulifera,
--  pubescens,
--  triphylla,
These are--
delightful fragrance.
appearance.
The CLIMBING, and TWINING SHRUBS offer a numerous family, highly
deserving of cultivation, the following being a few of the most
desirable.
The PASSION FLOWER, Passiflora, is a very large family of twining
Mignionette must be very carefully treated, kept moist, and every
Continue opening the roots of Bussorah roses, as well as the Rose
flower-garden, but the kitchen-garden and the orchard.]
THE TREE-MIGNONETTE.--This plant does not appear to be a distinct
bud.--_Gleenny's Hand Book of Gardening_.
But this requires alteration, or it is apt to communicate a baked
Ivory-black is mixed with the gum to produce a black colour; and
cinnabar or vermilion, to render the paste either brown or red.
With regard to the mode or state in which plants are preserved,
"After all we can do," Sir J.E. Smith observes, "plants dry very
 Some of the finest _Florists flowers_ have been reared by the
 Of Rail-Road travelling the reality is quite different from the
 I allude here chiefly to the ryots of wealthy Zemindars and to
 I have in some moods preferred the paintings of our own
 Had Evelyn only composed the great work of his 'Sylva, or a
Discourse of Forest Trees,' &c. his name would have excited the
gratitude of posterity. The voice of the patriot exults in his
 _Crisped knots_ are figures curled or twisted, or having waving
lines intersecting each other. They are sometimes planted in box.
breaking on the light green heads of the delicate little new-born
well-drilled Lilliputian battalion.
Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
Keep law, and form, and due proportion,
Showing, as in a model, our firm estate?
When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds; her finest flowers choked up,
Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined,
Her _knots_ disordered, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars.
 "We are unwilling to diminish or lose the credit of Paradise, or
 The leaves of the willow, though green above, are hoar below.
 See Mr. Loudon's most interesting and valuable work entitled
 All the rules of gardening are reducible to three heads: the
contrasts, the management of surprises and the concealment of the
expressed them all in two verses (after my manner, in very little
 In laying out a garden, the chief thing to be considered is the
 The seat and gardens of the Lord Viscount Cobham, in
And you, brave Cobham! to the latest breath
Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death:
Such in those moments as in all the past
"Oh, save my country, Heaven!" shall be your last.
 Two hundred acres and two hundred millions of francs were made
 Broome though a writer of no great genius (if any), had yet the
Pope came clean off with Homer, but they say,
Broome went before, and kindly swept the way.
 The late Humphrey Repton, one of the best landscape-gardeners
that England has produced, and who was for many years employed on
Dorset, the grace of courts, the Muse's pride.
The Earl of Dorset, though but a poetaster himself, knew how to
 This is generally put into the mouth of Pope, but if we are to
 It has been said that in laying out the grounds at Hagley, Lord
Meantime you gain the height, from whose fair brow,
The bursting prospect spreads immense around:
And snatched o'er hill, and dale, and wood, and lawn,
And verdant field, and darkening heath between,
And villages embosomed soft in trees,
And spiry towns by surging columns marked,
Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams;
Wide stretching from the hall, in whose kind haunt
The hospitable genius lingers still,
To where the broken landscape, by degrees,
Ascending, roughens into rigid hills;
O'er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds,
That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise.
To the memory of
In whose verse
Were all the natural graces.
And in whose manners
Was all the amiable simplicity
Of pastoral poetry,
With the sweet tenderness
Of the elegiac.
There is also at Hagley a complimentary inscription on an urn to
 Coleridge is reported to have said--"There is in Crabbe an
relieved the languor of the last days of two great men, of very
different characters--Sir Walter Scott and Charles James Fox.
 The poet had a cottage and garden in Kew-foot-Lane at or near
 Shene or Sheen: the old name of Richmond, signifying in Saxon
_shining_ or _splendour_.
 In his last sickness
 On looking back at page 36 I find that I have said in the foot
ordinary refinement.
 Brown succeeded to the popularity of Kent. He was nicknamed,
Here universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Leads on the eternal Spring.
 Mrs. Stowe visited the Jardin Mabille in the Champs Elysées, a
 Napoleon, it is said, once conceived the plan of roofing with
 Addison in the 477th number of the _Spectator_ in alluding to
Kensington Gardens, observes; "I think there are as many kinds of
The river wanders at its own sweet will.
Horace Walpole in his lively and pleasant little work on Modern
 This Palm-house, "the glory of the gardens," occupies an area of
Shakespeare's botanical knowledge.
"Ye leaning palms, that seem to look
Pleased o'er your image in the brook."
"West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom.
The _rank of osiers_ by the murmuring stream,
Left on your right hand brings you to the place."
 In Churton's _Rail Book of England_, published about three years
 _One would have thought &c._ See the garden of Armida, as
described by Tasso, C. xvi. 9, &c.
"In lieto aspetto il bel giardin s'aperse &c."
"And, that which all faire works doth most aggrace,
"The art, which all that wrought, appearéd in no place."
Which is literally from Tasso, C, xvi 9.
"E quel, che'l bello, e'l caro accresce à l'opre,
"L'arte, che tutto fa, nulla si scopre."
_Flowers of all hue_, and without thorns the rose.
Pope translates the passage thus;
Beds of all various _herbs_, for ever green,
In beauteous order terminate the scene.
_And over him, art stryving to compayre
With nature, did an arber greene dispied_
This whole episode is taken from Tasso, C. 16, where Rinaldo is
"Stimi (si misto il culto e col negletto)
"Sol naturali e gli ornamenti e i siti,
"Di natura arte par, che per diletto
"L'imitatrice sua scherzando imiti."
"Cujus in extremo est antrum nemorale necessu,
"Arte laboratum nulla, simulaverat artem
"Ingenio natura fuo nam pumice vivo,
"Et lenibus tophis nativum duxerat arcum
"Fons sonat a dextra, tenui perlucidas unda
"Margine gramineo patulos incinctus hiatus"
_And fast beside these trickled softly downe.
A gentle stream, &c._
Compare the following stanza in the continuation of the _Orlando
Innamorato_, by Nilcolo degli Agostinti, Lib. iv, C. 9.
"Ivi è un mormorio assai soave, e basso,
Che ogniun che l'ode lo fa addornientare,
L'acqua, ch'io dissi gia per entro un sasso
E parea che dicesse nel sonare.
Vatti riposa, ormai sei stanco, e lasso,
E gli augeletti, che s'udian cantare,
Ne la dolce armonia par che ogn'un dica,
Deh vien, e dormi ne la piaggia, aprica,"
 The oak was dedicated to Jupiter, and the poplar to Hercules.
 _Sicker_, surely; Chaucer spells it _siker_.
 _Tabreret_, a tabourer.
 _Attone_, at once--with him.
 What is the reason that an easterly wind is every where
No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows,
The dreaded east is all the wind that blows.
 One sweet scene of early pleasures in my native land I have
commemorated in the following sonnet:--
Romantic ruin! who could gaze on thee
Untouched by tender thoughts, and glimmering dreams
Of long-departed years? Lo! nature seems
Accordant with thy silent majesty!
The far blue hills--the smooth reposing sea--
The lonely forest--the meandering streams--
The farewell summer sun, whose mellowed beams
Illume thine ivied halls, and tinge each tree,
Whose green arms round thee cling--the balmy air--
The stainless vault above, that cloud or storm
'Tis hard to deem will ever more deform--
The season's countless graces,--all appear
To thy calm glory ministrant, and form
A scene to peace and meditation dear!
 Perhaps some formal or fashionable wiseacres may pronounce such
Forth goth all the court, both most and least,
To fetch the flowres fresh, and branch and blome,
And namely hawthorn brought both page and grome,
And then rejoicing in their great delite
Eke ech at others threw the flowres bright,
The primrose, violet, and the gold
With fresh garlants party blue and white.
 The May-pole was usually decorated with the flowers of the
The _hawthorn bush_, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made.
'Tis a rich scene, and yet the richest charm
That e'er clothed earth in beauty, lives not here.
Winds no green fence around the cultured farm
_No blossomed hawthorn shields the cottage dear_:
The land is bright; and yet to thine how drear,
Unrivalled England! Well the thought may pine
For those sweet fields where, each a little sphere,
In shaded, sacred fruitfulness doth shine,
And the heart higher beats that says; 'This spot is mine.'
 On May-day, the Ancient Romans used to go in procession to the
grotto of Egeria.
 See what is said of palms in a note on page 81.
 Phillips's _Flora Historica_.
 The word primrose is supposed to be a compound of _prime_ and
_rose_, and Spenser spells it prime rose
The pride and prime rose of the rest
Made by the maker's self to be admired
There's glory on thy _mountains_, proud Bengal--
 The allusion to the cowslip in Shakespeare's description of
Imogene must not be passed over here.--
On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drop
I' the bottom of the cowslip.
 The Guelder rose--This elegant plant is a native of Britain, and
 In a greenhouse
 Some flowers have always been made to a certain degree
 The floral or vegetable language is not always the language of
subject.
The Hyacinth of the ancient fabulists appears to have been the
Our wild hyacinth, which contributes so much to the beauty of our
singularly inappropriate. The botanical name of the hyacinth is
 Old Gerard calls it Blew Harebel or English _Jacint_, from the
 Supposed by some to be Delphinium Ajacis or Larkspur. But no one
 "A remarkably intelligent young botanist of our acquaintance
 The learned dry the flower of the Forget me not and flatten it
 The Abbé Molina in his History of Chili mentions a species of
 The Dutch are a strange people and of the most heterogeneous
 _Maun_, must
 _Stoure_, dust
 _Weet_, wetness, rain
 _Glinted_, peeped
 _Bield_, shelter
 _The origin of the Daisy_--When Christ was three years old his
 The Gorse is a low bush with prickly leaves growing like a
 The hill trumpeter.
 Nutmeg and Clove plantations.
 Leigh Hunt, in the dedication of his _Stories in Verse_ to the
 The following account of a newly discovered flower may be
home-returning voyager with its familiar fragrance.
 The Shan and other Poems
 My Hindu friend is not answerable for the following notes.
And infants winged, who mirthful throw
Shafts rose-tipped from nectareous bow.
 In 1811 this plant was subjected to a regular set of experiments
 It is perhaps of the Flax tribe. Mr. Piddington gives it the
 Roxburgh calls it "intensely fragrant."
 Sometimes employed by robbers to deprive their victims of the
power of resistance. In a strong dose it is poison.
 _Mirábilis jálapa_, or Marvel of Peru, is called by the country
 Marvell died in 1678; Linnaeus died just a hundred years later.
"Now, Muse, let's sing of rats."
 These are the initial letters of the Latin names of the plants,
they will be found at length on the lower column.
 The wild dog of Bengal
 The elephant.
 Even Jeremy Bentham, the great Utilitarian Philosopher, who
 A man of a polite imagination is let into a great many pleasures
In Esher's peaceful grove,
Where Kent and nature strove for Pelham's love,
 Pope in his well known paper in the _Guardian_ complains that a
flourishing on horseback at one end of the table and the Queen in
When the desire to subject nature to art had been carried to the
 In England it costs upon the average about 12 shillings or six
rupees to have a tree of 30 feet high transplanted.
 Southey's Common-Place Book.
 The height of a full grown banyan may be from sixty to eighty
feet; and many of them, I am fully confident, cover at least two
acres.--_Oriental Field Sports_.
trunk.--_Sylvan Sketches_.
 Alphonse Karr, bitterly ridicules the Botanical _Savants_ with
their barbarous nomenclature. He speaks of their mesocarps and
 _The Hand of Eve_--the handiwork of Eve.
 The ancient Greeks and Romans also married trees together in a
 The root of this plant, (_Euphorbia ligularia_,) mixed up with
constipation in persons of delicate habit, especially European
females.--_Voigt's Suburbanus Calcuttensis_.
 The root is bitter, nauseous, and used in North America as
anthelmintic. _A. Richard_.
 The native market gardens sell Madras roses at the rate of
 I may add to Mr. Speede's list of Roses the _Banksian Rose_. The
He gains all points who pleasingly confounds,
Surprizes, varies, and conceals the bounds.
 The following is the passage alluded to by Todd
A pleasant grove
With chant of tuneful birds resounding loud,
Thither he bent his way, determined there
To rest at noon, and entered soon the shade,
High roofed, and walks beneath and alleys brown,
That opened in the midst a woody scene,
Nature's own work it seemed (nature taught art)
And to a superstitious eye the haunt
Of wood gods and wood nymphs.
The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay;--
Ah! see, whoso fayre thing doest faine to see,
In springing flowre the image of thy day!
Ah! see the virgin rose, how sweetly shee
Doth first peepe forth with bashful modesty;
That fairer seems the less you see her may!
Lo! see soone after how more bold and free
Her baréd bosome she doth broad display;
Lo! see soone after how she fades and falls away!
So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flowre,
Ne more doth florish after first decay,
That erst was sought, to deck both bed and bowre
Of many a lady and many a paramoure!
Gather therefore the rose whilest yet is prime
For soone comes age that will her pride deflowre;
Gather the rose of love, whilest yet is time
Whilest loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime
_Fairie Queene, Book II. Canto XII._
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old time is still a flying;
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
Then be not coy, but use your time;
And while ye may, so marry:
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.