Proserpina Volume I Part 2

5. But the word 'petalos' is connected in Greek with another word, meaning, to fly,--so that you may think of a bird as spreading its petals to the wind; and with another, signifying Fate in its pursuing flight, the overtaking thing, or overflying Fate. Finally, there is another Greek word meaning 'wide,' [Greek: platus] (platys); whence at last our 'plate'--a thing made broad or extended--but especially made broad or 'flat' out of the solid, as in a lump of clay extended on the wheel, or a lump of metal extended by the hammer. So the first we call Platter; the second Plate, when of the precious metals. Then putting _b_ for {43} _p_, and _d_ for _t_, we get the blade of an oar, and blade of gra.s.s.

6. Now gather a branch of laurel, and look at it carefully. You may read the history of the being of half the earth in one of those green oval leaves--the things that the sun and the rivers have made out of dry ground.

Daphne--daughter of Enipeus, and beloved by the Sun,--that fable gives you at once the two great facts about vegetation. Where warmth is, and moisture--there, also, the leaf. Where no warmth--there is no leaf; where there is no dew--no leaf.

7. Look, then, to the branch you hold in your hand. That you _can_ so hold it, or make a crown of it, if you choose, is the first thing I want you to note of it;--the proportion of size, namely, between the leaf and _you_.

Great part of your life and character, as a human creature, has depended on that. Suppose all leaves had been s.p.a.cious, like some palm leaves; solid, like cactus stem; or that trees had grown, as they might of course just as easily have grown, like mushrooms, all one great cl.u.s.ter of leaf round one stalk. I do not say that they are divided into small leaves only for your delight, or your service, as if you were the monarch of everything--even in this atom of a globe. You are made of your proper size; and the leaves of theirs: for reasons, and by laws, of which neither the leaves nor you know anything. Only note the harmony between both, and the joy we may have in this division and mystery of the frivolous and tremulous petals, {44} which break the light and the breeze,--compared to what with the frivolous and tremulous mind which is in us, we could have had out of domes, or penthouses, or walls of leaf.

8. Secondly; think awhile of its dark clear green, and the good of it to you. Scientifically, you know green in leaves is owing to 'chlorophyll,'

or, in English, to 'greenleaf.' It may be very fine to know that; but my advice to you, on the whole, is to rest content with the general fact that leaves are green when they do not grow in or near smoky towns; and not by any means to rest content with the fact that very soon there will not be a green leaf in England, but only greenish-black ones. And thereon resolve that you will yourself endeavour to promote the growing of the green wood, rather than of the black.

9. Looking at the back of your laurel-leaves, you see how the central rib or spine of each, and the lateral branchings, strengthen and carry it. I find much confused use, in botanical works, of the words Vein and Rib. For, indeed, there are veins _in_ the ribs of leaves, as marrow in bones; and the projecting bars often gradually depress themselves into a transparent net of rivers. But the _mechanical_ force of the framework in carrying the leaf-tissue is the point first to be noticed; it is that which admits, regulates, or restrains the visible motions of the leaf; while the system of circulation can only be studied through the microscope. But the ribbed leaf bears itself to the wind, as the webbed foot of a bird does to the {45} water, and needs the same kind, though not the same strength, of support; and its ribs always are partly therefore const.i.tuted of strong woody substance, which is knit out of the tissue; and you can extricate this skeleton framework, and keep it, after the leaf-tissue is dissolved.

So I shall henceforward speak simply of the leaf and its ribs,--only specifying the additional veined structure on necessary occasions.

10. I have just said that the ribs--and might have said, farther, the stalk that sustains them--are knit out of the _tissue_ of the leaf. But what is the leaf tissue itself knit out of? One would think that was nearly the first thing to be discovered, or at least to be thought of, concerning plants,--namely, how and of what they are made. We say they 'grow.' But you know that they can't grow out of nothing;--this solid wood and rich tracery must be made out of some previously existing substance. What is the substance?--and how is it woven into leaves.--twisted into wood?

11. Consider how fast this is done, in spring. You walk in February over a slippery field, where, through h.o.a.r-frost and mud, you perhaps hardly see the small green blades of trampled turf. In twelve weeks you wade through the same field up to your knees in fresh gra.s.s; and in a week or two more, you mow two or three solid haystacks off it. In winter you walk by your currant-bush, or your vine. They are shrivelled sticks--like bits of black tea in the canister. You pa.s.s again in May, and {46} the currant-bush looks like a young sycamore tree; and the vine is a bower: and meanwhile the forests, all over this side of the round world, have grown their foot or two in height, with new leaves--so much deeper, so much denser than they were. Where has it all come from? Cut off the fresh shoots from a single branch of any tree in May. Weigh them; and then consider that so much weight has been added to every such living branch, everywhere, this side the equator, within the last two months. What is all that made of?

12. Well, this much the botanists really know, and tell us,--It is made chiefly of the breath of animals: that is to say, of the substance which, during the past year, animals have breathed into the air; and which, if they went on breathing, and their breath were not made into trees, would poison them, or rather suffocate them, as people are suffocated in uncleansed pits, and dogs in the Grotta del Cane. So that you may look upon the gra.s.s and forests of the earth as a kind of green h.o.a.r-frost, frozen upon it from our breath, as, on the window-panes, the white arborescence of ice.

13. But how is it made into wood?

The substances that have been breathed into the air are charcoal, with oxygen and hydrogen,--or, more plainly, charcoal and water. Some necessary earths,--in smaller quant.i.ty, but absolutely essential,--the trees get from the ground; but, I believe all the charcoal they want, and most of the water, from the air. Now the question is, where and how do they take it in, and digest it into wood? {47}

14. You know, in spring, and partly through all the year, except in frost, a liquid called 'sap' circulates in trees, of which the nature, one should have thought, might have been ascertained by mankind in the six thousand years they have been cutting wood. Under the impression always that it _had been_ ascertained, and that I could at any time know all about it, I have put off till to-day, 19th October, 1869, when I am past fifty, the knowing anything about it at all. But I will really endeavour now to ascertain something, and take to my botanical books, accordingly, in due order.

(1) Dresser's "Rudiments of Botany." 'Sap' not in the index; only Samara, and Sarcocarp,--about neither of which I feel the smallest curiosity. (2) Figuier's "Histoire des Plantes."[18] 'Seve,' not in index; only Serpolet, and Sherardia arvensis, which also have no help in them for me. (3) Balfour's "Manual of Botany." 'Sap,'--yes, at last. "Article 257. Course of fluids in exogenous stems." I don't care about the course just now: I want to know where the fluids come from. "If a plant be plunged into a weak solution of acetate of lead,"--I don't in the least want to know what happens. "From the minuteness of the tissue, it is not easy to determine the vessels through which the sap moves." Who said it was? If it had been easy, I should have done it myself. "Changes take place in the composition of the {48} sap in its upward course." I dare say; but I don't know yet what its composition is before it begins going up. "The Elaborated Sap by Mr. Schultz has been called 'latex.'" I wish Mr. Schultz were in a hogshead of it, with the top on. "On account of these movements in the latex, the laticiferous vessels have been denominated cinenchymatous." I do not venture to print the expressions which I here mentally make use of.

15. Stay,--here, at last, in Article 264, is something to the purpose: "It appears then that, in the case of Exogenous plants, the fluid matter in the soil, containing different substances in solution, is sucked up by the extremities of the roots." Yes, but how of the pine trees on yonder rock?--Is there any sap in the rock, or water either? The moisture must be seized during actual rain on the root, or stored up from the snow; stored up, any way, in a tranquil, not actively sappy, state, till the time comes for its change, of which there is no account here.

16. I have only one chance left now. Lindley's "Introduction to Botany."

'Sap,'--yes,--'General motion of.' II. 325. "The course which is taken by the sap, after entering a plant, is the first subject for consideration."

My dear doctor, I have learned nearly whatever I know of plant structure from you, and am grateful; and that it is little, is not your fault, but mine. But this--let me say it with all sincere respect--is not what you should have told me here. You know, far better than I, that 'sap' never does enter a plant at all; but only salt, or earth and water, {49} and that the roots alone could not make it; and that, therefore, the course of it must be, in great part, the result or process of the actual making. But I will read now, patiently; for I know you will tell me much that is worth hearing, though not perhaps what I want.

Yes; now that I have read Lindley's statement carefully, I find it is full of precious things; and this is what, with thinking over it, I can gather for you.

17. First, towards the end of January,--as the light enlarges, and the trees revive from their rest,--there is a general liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius in their stems; and I suppose there is really a great deal of moisture rapidly absorbed from the earth in most cases; and that this absorption is a great help to the sun in drying the winter's damp out of it for us: then, with that strange vital power,--which scientific people are usually as afraid of naming as common people are afraid of naming Death,--the tree gives the gathered earth and water a changed existence; and to this new-born liquid an upward motion from the earth, as our blood has from the heart; for the life of the tree is out of the earth; and this upward motion has a mechanical power in pushing on the growth. "_Forced onward_ by the current of sap, the plumule ascends," (Lindley, p.

132,)--this blood of the tree having to supply, exactly as our own blood has, not only the forming powers of substance, but a continual evaporation, "approximately seventeen times more than that of the human body," while the force of motion in the sap "is {50} sometimes five times greater than that which impels the blood in the crural artery of the horse."

18. Hence generally, I think we may conclude thus much,--that at every pore of its surface, under ground and above, the plant in the spring absorbs moisture, which instantly disperses itself through its whole system "by means of some permeable quality of the membranes of the cellular tissue invisible to our eyes even by the most powerful gla.s.ses" (p. 326); that in this way subjected to the vital power of the tree, it becomes sap, properly so called, which pa.s.ses downwards through this cellular tissue, slowly and secretly; and then upwards, through the great vessels of the tree, violently, stretching out the supple twigs of it as yon see a flaccid waterpipe swell and move when the c.o.c.k is turned to fill it. And the tree becomes literally a fountain, of which the springing streamlets are clothed with new-woven garments of green tissue, and of which the silver spray stays in the sky,--a spray, now, of leaves.

19. That is the gist of the matter; and a very wonderful gist it is, to my mind. The secret and subtle descent--the violent and exulting resilience of the tree's blood,--what guides it?--what compels? The creature has no heart to beat like ours; one cannot take refuge from the mystery in a 'muscular contraction.' Fountain without supply--playing by its own force, for ever rising and falling all through the days of Spring, spending itself at last in gathered clouds of leaves, and iris of blossom.

Very wonderful; and it seems, for the present, that {51} we know nothing whatever about its causes;--nay, the strangeness of the reversed arterial and vein motion, without a heart, does not seem to strike anybody. Perhaps, however, it may interest you, as I observe it does the botanists, to know that the cellular tissue through which the motion is effected is called Parenchym, and the woody tissue, Bothrenchym; and that Parenchym is divided, by a system of nomenclature which "has some advantages over that more commonly in use,"[19] into merenchyma, conenchyma, ovenchyma, atractenchyma, cylindrenchyma, colpenchyma, cladenchyma, and prismenchyma.

20. Take your laurel branch into your hand again. There are, as you must well know, innumerable shapes and orders of leaves;--there are some like claws; some like fingers, and some like feet; there are endlessly cleft ones, and endlessly cl.u.s.tered ones, and inscrutable divisions within divisions of the fretted verdure; and wrinkles, and ripples, and st.i.tchings, and hemmings, and pinchings, and gatherings, and crumplings, and clippings, and what not. But there is nothing so constantly n.o.ble as the pure leaf of the laurel, bay, orange, and olive; numerable, sequent, perfect in setting, divinely simple and serene. I shall call these n.o.ble leaves 'Apolline' leaves. They characterize many orders of plants, great and small,--from the magnolia to the myrtle, and exquisite 'myrtille' {52} of the hills, (bilberry); but wherever you find them, strong, l.u.s.trous, dark green, simply formed, richly scented or stored,--you have nearly always kindly and lovely vegetation, in healthy ground and air.

21. The gradual diminution in rank beneath the Apolline leaf, takes place in others by the loss of one or more of the qualities above named. The Apolline leaf, I said, is strong, l.u.s.trous, full in its green, rich in substance, simple in form. The inferior leaves are those which have lost strength, and become thin, like paper; which have lost l.u.s.tre, and become dead by roughness of surface, like the nettle,--(an Apolline leaf may become dead by _bloom_, like the olive, yet not lose beauty); which have lost colour and become feeble in green, as in the poplar, or _crudely_ bright, like rice; which have lost substance and softness, and have nothing to give in scent or nourishment; or become flinty or spiny; finally, which have lost simplicity, and become cloven or jagged. Many of these losses are partly atoned for by gain of some peculiar loveliness. Gra.s.s and moss, and parsley and fern, have each their own delightfulness; yet they are all of inferior power and honour, compared to the Apolline leaves.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 3.]

22. You see, however, that though your laurel leaf has a central stem, and traces of ribs branching from it, in a vertebrated manner, they are so faint that we cannot take it for a type of vertebrate structure. But the two figures of elm and alisma leaf, given in Modern Painters (vol. iii.), and now here repeated, Fig. 3, will clearly enough {53} show the opposition between this vertebrate form, branching again usually at the edges, _a_, and the softly opening lines diffused at the stem, and gathered at the point of the leaf _b_, which, as you almost without doubt know already are characteristic of a vast group of plants, including especially all the lilies, gra.s.ses, and palms, which for the most part are the signs of local or temporary moisture in hot countries;--local, as of fountains and streams; temporary, as of rain or inundation.

But temporary, still more definitely in the day, than in the year. When you go out, delighted, into the dew of the morning, have you ever considered why it is so rich upon the gra.s.s;--why it is _not_ upon the trees? It _is_ partly on the trees, but yet your memory of it will be always chiefly of its gleam upon the lawn. On many {54} trees you will find there is none at all. I cannot follow out here the many inquiries connected with this subject, but, broadly, remember the branched trees are fed chiefly by rain,--the unbranched ones by dew, visible or invisible; that is to say, at all events by moisture which they can gather for themselves out of the air; or else by streams and springs. Hence the division of the verse of the song of Moses: "My doctrine shall drop as the rain; my speech shall distil as the dew: as the _small_ rain upon the tender _herb_, and as the showers upon the gra.s.s."

23. Next, examining the direction of the veins in the leaf of the alisma, _b_, Fig. 3, you see they all open widely, as soon as they can, towards the thick part of the leaf; and then taper, apparently with reluctance, pushing each other outwards, to the point. If the leaf were a lake of the same shape, and its stem the entering river, the lines of the currents pa.s.sing through it would, I believe, be nearly the same as that of the veins in the aquatic leaf. I have not examined the fluid law accurately, and I do not suppose there is more real correspondence than may be caused by the leaf's expanding in every permitted direction, as the water would, with all the speed it can; but the resemblance is so close as to enable you to fasten the relation of the unbranched leaves to streams more distinctly in your mind,--just as the toss of the palm leaves from their stem may, I think, in their likeness to the springing of a fountain, remind you of their relation to the desert, and their necessity, therein, to life of man and beast. {55}

24. And thus, a.s.sociating these gra.s.s and lily leaves always with fountains, or with dew, I think we may get a pretty general name for them also. You know that Cora, our Madonna of the flowers, was lost in Sicilian Fields: you know, also, that the fairest of Greek fountains, lost in Greece, was thought to rise in a Sicilian islet; and that the real springing of the n.o.ble fountain in that rock was one of the causes which determined the position of the greatest Greek city of Sicily. So I think, as we call the fairest branched leaves 'Apolline,' we will call the fairest flowing ones 'Arethusan.' But remember that the Apolline leaf represents only the central type of land leaves, and is, within certain limits, of a fixed form; while the beautiful Arethusan leaves, alike in flowing of their lines, change their forms indefinitely,--some shaped like round pools, and some like winding currents, and many like arrows, and many like hearts, and otherwise varied and variable, as leaves ought to be,--that rise out of the waters, and float amidst the pausing of their foam.

25. Brantwood, _Easter Day_, 1875.--I don't like to spoil my pretty sentence, above; but on reading it over, I suspect I wrote it confusing the water-lily leaf, and other floating ones of the same kind, with the Arethusan forms. But the water-lily and water-ranunculus leaves, and such others, are to the orders of earth-loving leaves what ducks and swans are to birds; (the swan is the water-lily of birds;) they are _swimming_ leaves; not properly watery creatures, or able to live under water like fish, (unless {56} when dormant), but just like birds that pa.s.s their lives on the surface of the waves--though they must breathe in the air.

And these natant leaves, as they lie on the water surface, do not want strong ribs to carry them,[20] but have very delicate ones beautifully branching into the orbed s.p.a.ce, to keep the tissue nice and flat; while, on the other hand, leaves that really have to grow under water, sacrifice their tissue, and keep only their ribs, like coral animals; ('Ranunculus heterophyllus,' 'other-leaved Frog-flower,' and its like,) just as, if you keep your own hands too long in water, they shrivel at the finger-ends.

26. So that you must not attach any great botanical importance to the characters of contrasted aspects in leaves, which I wish you to express by the words 'Apolline' and 'Arethusan'; but their mythic importance is very great, and your careful observance of it will help you completely to understand the beautiful Greek fable of Apollo and Daphne. There are indeed several Daphnes, and the first root of the name is far away in another field of thought altogether, connected with the G.o.ds of Light. But etymology, the best of servants, is an unreasonable master; and Professor Max Muller trusts his deep-reaching knowledge of the first ideas connected with the names of Athena {57} and Daphne, too implicitly, when he supposes this idea to be retained in central Greek theology. 'Athena' originally meant only the dawn, among nations who knew nothing of a Sacred Spirit. But the Athena who catches Achilles by the hair, and urges the spear of Diomed, has not, in the mind of Homer, the slightest remaining connection with the mere beauty of daybreak. Daphne chased by Apollo, may perhaps--though I doubt even this much of consistence in the earlier myth--have meant the Dawn pursued by the Sun. But there is no trace whatever of this first idea left in the fable of Arcadia and Thessaly.

27. The central Greek Daphne is the daughter of one of the great _river_ G.o.ds of Arcadia; her mother is the Earth. Now Arcadia is the Oberland of Greece; and the crests of Cyllene, Erymanthus, and Maenalus[21] surround it, like the Swiss forest cantons, with walls of rock, and shadows of pine. And it divides itself, like the Oberland, into three regions: first, the region of rock and snow, sacred to Mercury and Apollo, in which Mercury's birth on Cyllene, his construction of the lyre, and his stealing the oxen of Apollo, are all expressions of the enchantments of cloud and sound, mingling with the sunshine, on the cliffs of Cyllene.

"While the mists Flying, and rainy vapours, call out shapes {58} And phantoms from the crags and solid earth As fast as a musician scatters sounds Out of his instrument."

Then came the pine region, sacred especially to Pan and Maenalus, the son of Lycaon and brother of Callisto; and you had better remember this relationship carefully, for the sake of the meaning of the constellations of Ursa Major and the Mons Maenalius, and of their wolf and bear traditions; (compare also the strong impression on the Greek mind of the wild leafiness, nourished by snow, of the Boeotian Cithaeron,--"Oh, thou lake-hollow, full of divine leaves, and of wild creatures, nurse of the snow, darling of Diana," (Phoenissae, 801)). How wild the climate of this pine region is, you may judge from the pieces in the note below[22] out of Colonel Leake's diary in {59} crossing the Maenalian range in spring. And then, lastly, you have the laurel and vine region, full of sweetness and Elysian beauty.

28. Now as Mercury is the ruling power of the hill enchantment, so Daphne of the leafy peace. She is, in her first life, the daughter of the mountain river, the mist of it filling the valley; the Sun, pursuing, and effacing it, from dell to dell, is, literally, Apollo pursuing Daphne, and _adverse_ to her; (not, as in the earlier tradition, the Sun pursuing only his own light). Daphne, thus hunted, cries to her mother, the Earth, which opens, and receives her, causing the laurel to spring up in her stead. That is to say, wherever the rocks protect the mist from the sunbeam, and suffer it to water the earth, there the laurel and other richest vegetation fill the hollows, giving a better glory to the sun itself. For sunshine, on the torrent spray, {60} on the gra.s.s of its valley, and entangled among the laurel stems, or glancing from their leaves, became a thousandfold lovelier and more sacred than the same sunbeams, burning on the leafless mountain-side.

And farther, the leaf, in its connection with the river, is typically expressive, not, as the flower was, of human fading and pa.s.sing away, but of the perpetual flow and renewal of human mind and thought, rising "like the rivers that run among the hills"; therefore it was that the youth of Greece sacrificed their hair--the sign of their continually renewed strength,--to the rivers, and to Apollo. Therefore, to commemorate Apollo's own chief victory over death--over Python, the corrupter,--a laurel branch was gathered every ninth year in the vale of Tempe; and the laurel leaf became the reward or crown of all beneficent and enduring work of man--work of inspiration, born of the strength of the earth, and of the dew of heaven, and which can never pa.s.s away.

29. You may doubt at first, even because of its grace, this meaning in the fable of Apollo and Daphne; you will not doubt it, however, when you trace it back to its first eastern origin. When we speak carelessly of the traditions respecting the Garden of Eden, (or in Hebrew, remember, Garden of Delight,) we are apt to confuse Milton's descriptions with those in the book of Genesis. Milton fills his Paradise with flowers; but no flowers are spoken of in Genesis. We may indeed conclude that in speaking of every herb of the field, flowers are included. But they {61} are not named. The things that are _named_ in the Garden of Delight are trees only.

The words are, "every tree that was pleasant to the sight and good for food;" and as if to mark the idea more strongly for us in the Septuagint, even the ordinary Greek word for tree is not used, but the word [Greek: xulon],--literally, every 'wood,' every piece of _timber_ that was pleasant or good. They are indeed the "vivi travi,"--living rafters, of Dante's Apennine.

Do you remember how those trees were said to be watered? Not by the four rivers only. The rivers could not supply the place of rain. No rivers do; for in truth they are the refuse of rain. No storm-clouds were there, nor hidings of the blue by darkening veil; but there went up a _mist_ from the earth, and watered the face of the ground,--or, as in Septuagint and Vulgate, "There went forth a fountain from the earth, and gave the earth to drink."

30. And now, lastly, we continually think of that Garden of Delight, as if it existed, or could exist, no longer; wholly forgetting that it is spoken of in Scripture as perpetually existent; and some of its fairest trees as existent also, or only recently destroyed. When Ezekiel is describing to Pharaoh the greatness of the a.s.syrians, do you remember what image he gives of them? "Behold, the a.s.syrian was a cedar in Lebanon, with fair branches; and his top was among the thick boughs; the waters nourished him, and the deep brought him up, with her rivers {62} running round about his plants.

Under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young; and under his shadow dwelt all great nations."

31. Now hear what follows. "The cedars _in the Garden of G.o.d_ could not hide _him_. The fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the Garden of G.o.d was like unto him in beauty."

So that you see, whenever a nation rises into consistent, vital, and, through many generations, enduring power, _there_ is still the Garden of G.o.d; still it is the water of life which feeds the roots of it; and still the succession of its people is imaged by the perennial leaf.a.ge of trees of Paradise. Could this be said of a.s.syria, and shall it not be said of England? How much more, of lives such as ours should be,--just, laborious, united in aim, beneficent in fulfilment, may the image be used of the leaves of the trees of Eden! Other symbols have been given often to show the evanescence and slightness of our lives--the foam upon the water, the gra.s.s on the housetop, the vapour that vanishes away; yet none of these are images of true human life. That life, when it is real, is _not_ evanescent; is _not_ slight; does _not_ vanish away. Every n.o.ble life leaves the fibre of it interwoven for ever in the work of the world; by so much, evermore, the strength of the human race has gained; more stubborn in the root, higher towards heaven in the branch; and, "as a teil tree, and as an oak,--whose substance is in them {63} when they cast their leaves,--so the holy seed is in the midst thereof."

32. Only remember on what conditions. In the great Psalm of life, we are told that everything that a man doeth shall prosper, so only that he delight in the law of his G.o.d, that he hath not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor sat in the seat of the scornful. Is it among these leaves of the perpetual Spring,--helpful leaves for the healing of the nations,--that we mean to have our part and place, or rather among the "brown skeletons of leaves that lag, the forest brook along"? For other leaves there are, and other streams that water them,--not water of life, but water of Acheron. Autumnal leaves there are that strew the brooks, in Vallombrosa. Remember you how the name of the place was changed: "Once called 'Sweet water' (Aqua bella), now, the Shadowy Vale." Portion in one or other name we must choose, all of us,--with the living olive, by the living fountains of waters, or with the wild fig trees, whose leaf.a.ge of human soul is strewed along the brooks of death, in the eternal Vallombrosa.

{64}

CHAPTER IV.

THE FLOWER.

ROME, _Whit Monday, 1874_.