Flowers And Flower-Gardens Part 10

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 sh.o.r.e; 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_.

I must here give a few stanzas from Spenser's description of the _Bower of Bliss_

In which whatever in this worldly state Is sweet and pleasing unto living sense, Or that may dayntiest fantasy aggrate Was poured forth with pleantiful dispence.

The English poet in his Fairie Queene has borrowed a great deal from Ta.s.so and Ariosto, but generally speaking, his borrowings, like those of most true poets, are improvements upon the original.

THE BOWER OF BLISS.

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-s.p.a.ce; The trembling groves; the christall running by; And that which all faire workes doth most aggrace, The art, which all that wrought, appeared in no place.

One would have thought, (so cunningly the rude[039]

And scorned 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 answered to all.

_The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto XII._

Every school-boy has heard of the gardens of the Hesperides. The story is told in many different ways. According to some accounts, the Hesperides, the daughters of Hesperus, were appointed to keep charge of the tree of golden apples which Jupiter presented to Juno on their wedding day. A hundred-headed dragon that never slept, (the offspring of Typhon,) couched at the foot of the tree. It was one of the twelve labors of Hercules to obtain possession of some of these apples. He slew the dragon and gathered three golden apples. The gardens, according to some authorities, were situated near Mount Atlas.

Shakespeare seems to have taken _Hesperides_ to be the name of the garden instead of that of its fair keepers. Even the learned Milton in his _Paradise Regained_, (Book II) talks of _the ladies of the Hesperides_, and appears to make the word Hesperides synonymous with "Hesperian gardens." Bishop Newton, in a foot-note to the pa.s.sage in "Paradise Regained," asks, "What are the Hesperides famous for, but the gardens and orchards which _they had_ bearing golden fruit in the western Isles of Africa." Perhaps after all there may be some good authority in favor of extending the names of the nymphs to the garden itself. Malone, while condemning Shakespeare's use of the words as inaccurate, acknowledges that other poets have used it in the same way, and quotes as an instance, the following lines from Robert Greene:--

Shew thee the tree, leaved with refined gold, Whereon the fearful dragon held his seat, That watched _the garden_ called the _Hesperides_.

_Robert Greene_.

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.

_Pericles, Prince of Tyre_.

Milton, after the fourth line of his Comus, had originally inserted, in his ma.n.u.script draft of the poem, the following description of the garden of the Hesperides.

THE GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES

Amid the Hesperian gardens, on whose banks Bedewed with nectar and celestial songs Eternal roses grow, and hyacinth, And fruits of golden rind, on whose fair tree The scaly harnessed dragon ever keeps His uninchanted eye, around the verge And sacred limits of this blissful Isle The jealous ocean that old river winds His far extended aims, till with steep fall Half his waste flood the wide Atlantic fills; And half the slow unfathomed Stygian pool But soft, I was not sent to court your wonder With distant worlds and strange removed climes Yet thence I come and oft from thence behold The smoke and stir of this dim narrow spot

Milton subsequently drew his pen through these lines, for what reason is not known. Bishop Newton observes, that this pa.s.sage, saved from intended destruction, may serve as a specimen of the truth of the observation that

Poets lose half the praise they should have got Could it be known what they discreetly blot.

_Waller_.

As I have quoted in an earlier page some unfavorable allusions to Homer's description of a Grecian garden, it will be but fair to follow up Milton's picture of Paradise, and Ta.s.so's garden of Armida, and Ariosto's Garden of Alcina, and Spenser's Garden of Adonis and his Bower of Bliss, with Homer's description of the Garden of Alcinous. Minerva tells Ulysses that the Royal mansion to which the garden of Alcinous is attached is of such conspicuous grandeur and so generally known, that any child might lead him to it;

For Phoeacia's sons Possess not houses equalling in aught The mansion of Alcinous, the king.

I shall give Cowper's version, because it may be less familiar to the reader than Pope's, which is in every one's hand.

THE GARDEN OF ALCINOUS

Without the court, and to the gates adjoined A s.p.a.cious 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 cl.u.s.tering grow again Where cl.u.s.ters grew, and (every apple stripped) The boughs soon tempt the gatherer as before.

There too, well rooted, and of fruit profuse, His vineyard grows; part, wide extended, basks In the sun's beams; the arid level glows; In part they gather, and in part they tread The wine-press, while, before the eye, the grapes Here put their blossoms forth, there gather fast Their blackness. On the garden's verge extreme Flowers of all hues[040] smile all the year, arranged With neatest art judicious, and amid The lovely scene two fountains welling forth, One visits, into every part diffused, The garden-ground, the other soft beneath The threshold steals into the palace court Whence every citizen his vase supplies.

_Homer's Odyssey, Book VII_.

The mode of watering the garden-ground, and the use made of the water by the public--

Whence every citizen his vase supplies--

can hardly fail to remind Indian and Anglo-Indian readers of a Hindu gentleman's garden in Bengal.

Pope first published in the _Guardian_ his own version of the account of the garden of Alcinous and subsequently gave it a place in his entire translation of Homer. In introducing the readers of the _Guardian_ to the garden of Alcinous he observes that "the two most celebrated wits of the world have each left us a particular picture of a garden; wherein those great masters, being wholly unconfined and pointing at pleasure, may be thought to have given a full idea of what seemed most excellent in that way. These (one may observe) consist entirely of the useful part of horticulture, fruit trees, herbs, waters, &c. The pieces I am speaking of are Virgil's account of the garden of the old Corycian, and Homer's of that of Alcinous. The first of these is already known to the English reader, by the excellent versions of Mr. Dryden and Mr.

Addison."

I do not think our present landscape-gardeners, or parterre-gardeners or even our fruit or kitchen-gardeners can be much enchanted with Virgil's ideal of a garden, but here it is, as "done into English," by John Dryden, who describes the Roman Poet as "a profound naturalist," and "_a curious Florist_."

THE GARDEN OF THE OLD CORYCIAN.

I chanc'd an old Corycian swain to know, Lord of few acres, and those barren too, Unfit for sheep or vines, and more unfit to sow: Yet, lab'ring well his little spot of ground, Some scatt'ring pot-herbs here and there he found, Which, cultivated with his daily care And bruis'd with vervain, were his frugal fare.

With wholesome poppy-flow'rs, to mend his homely board: For, late returning home, he supp'd at ease, And wisely deem'd the wealth of monarchs less: The little of his own, because his own, did please.

To quit his care, he gather'd, first of all, In spring the roses, apples in the fall: And, when cold winter split the rocks in twain, And ice the running rivers did restrain, He stripp'd the bear's foot of its leafy growth, And, calling western winds, accus'd the spring of sloth He therefore first among the swains was found To reap the product of his labour'd ground, And squeeze the combs with golden liquor crown'd His limes were first in flow'rs, his lofty pines, With friendly shade, secur'd his tender vines.

For ev'ry bloom his trees in spring afford, An autumn apple was by tale restor'd He knew to rank his elms in even rows, For fruit the grafted pear tree to dispose, And tame to plums the sourness of the sloes With spreading planes he made a cool retreat, To shade good fellows from the summer's heat

_Virgil's Georgics, Book IV_.

An excellent Scottish poet--Allan Ramsay--a true and unaffected describer of rural life and scenery--seems to have had as great a dislike to topiary gardens, and quite as earnest a love of nature, as any of the best Italian poets. The author of the "Gentle Shepherd" tells us in the following lines what sort of garden most pleased his fancy.

ALLAN RAMSAY'S GARDEN.

I love the garden wild and wide, Where oaks have plum-trees by their side, Where woodbines and the twisting vine Clip round the pear tree and the pine Where mixed jonquils and gowans grow And roses midst rank clover grow Upon a bank of a clear strand, In wrimplings made by Nature's hand Though docks and brambles here and there May sometimes cheat the gardener's care, _Yet this to me is Paradise_, _Compared with prim cut plots and nice_, _Where Nature has to Act resigned,_ _Till all looks mean, stiff and confined_.

I cannot say that I should wish to see forest trees and docks and brambles in garden borders. Honest Allan here runs a little into the extreme, as men are apt enough to do, when they try to get as far as possible from the side advocated by an opposite party.