Part 2 (2/2)
[Footnote 6: Think of ”a paradise not like this of ours with so much pains and curiosity made with hands”--says Evelyn, in the middle of a rhapsody on flowers--”eternal in the heavens, where all the trees are trees of life, the flowers all amaranths; all the plants perennial, ever verdant, ever pregnant, and where those who desire knowledge may taste freely of the fruit of that tree which cost the first gardener and posterity so dear.” (Sylva, ”Of Forest-trees,” p. 148.)]
Again. The punctual waking of the flowers to new life upon the ruin of the old is unfavourable to the fas.h.i.+onable theory of extinction, for it shows death as the prelude of life. Nevertheless, be it admitted, the garden-allegory points not all one way; it is, so to speak, a paradox that mocks while it comforts. For a garden is ever perplexing us with the ”riddle of the painful earth,” ever challenging our faith with its counter-proof, ever thrusting before our eyes the abortive effort, the inequality of lot (two roses on a single stem, the one full-blown, a floral paragon, the other dwarfed and withered), the permitted spite of destiny which favours the fittest and drives the weak to the wall--ever preaching, with d.a.m.nable iteration, the folly of resisting the ills that warp life and blight fair promise.
And yet while this is so, the annual spectacle of spring's fresh repair--the awakening from winter's trance--the new life that grows in the womb of the tomb--is happy augury to the soul that pa.s.ses away, immature and but half-expressed, of l.u.s.ty days and consummate powers in the everlasting garden of G.o.d. It is this very garden's message, ”the best is yet to be,” that smothers the self-pitying whine in poor David Gray's Elegy[7] and braces his spirit with the tonic of a wholesome pride. To the human flower that is born to blush unseen, or born, perchance, not to bloom at all, but only to feel the quickening thrill of April-pa.s.sion--the first sweet consciousness of life--the electric touch in the soul like the faint beatings in the calyx of the rose--and then to die, to die ”not knowing what it was to live”--to such seemingly cancelled souls the garden's message is ”trust, acquiesce, be pa.s.sive in the Master's hand: the game of life is lost, but not for aye--
... ”There is life with G.o.d In other Kingdom of a sweeter air: In Eden every flower is blown.”
[Footnote 7: ”My Epitaph.”
”Below lies one whose name was traced in sand-- He died, not knowing what it was to live; Died while the first sweet consciousness of manhood And maiden thought electrified his soul: Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose.
Bewildered reader, pa.s.s without a sigh In a proud sorrow! There is life with G.o.d, In other Kingdom of a sweeter air; In Eden every flower is blown. Amen.”
David Gray (”A Poet's Sketch-book,” R. Buchanan, p. 81.)]
To come back to lower ground, a garden represents what one may call the first simplicity of external Nature's ways and means, and the first simplicity of man's handling of them, carried to distinction. On one side we have Nature's ”unpremeditated art” surpa.s.sed upon its own lines--Nature's tardy efforts and common elementary traits pushed to a masterpiece. On the other side is the callow craft of Adam's ”'prentice han',” turned into scrupulous nice-fingered Art, with forcing-pits, gla.s.s-houses, patent manures, scientific propagation, and the accredited rules and h.o.a.rded maxims of a host of horticultural journals at its back.
Or, to run still more upon fancy. A garden is a place where these two whilom foes--Nature and man--patch up a peace for the nonce. Outside the garden precincts--in the furrowed field, in the forest, the quarry, the mine, out upon the broad seas--the feud still prevails that began as our first parents found themselves on the wrong side of the gate of Paradise. But
”Here contest grows but interchange of love”--
here the old foes have struck a truce and are leagued together in a kind of idyllic intimacy, as is witnessed in their exchange of grace for grace, and the crowning touch that each puts upon the other's efforts.
The garden, I have said, is a sort of ”betweenity”--part heaven, part earth, in its suggestions; so, too, in its make-up is it part Nature, part man: for neither can strictly say ”I made the garden” to disregard the other's share in it. True, that behind all the contents of the place sits primal Nature, but Nature ”to advantage dressed,” Nature in a rich disguise, Nature delicately humoured, stamped with new qualities, furnished with a new momentum, led to new conclusions, by man's skill in selection and artistic concentration. True, that the contents of the place have their originals somewhere in the wild--in forest or coppice, or meadow, or hedgerow, swamp, jungle, Alp, or plain hillside. We can run each thing to earth any day, only that a change has pa.s.sed over them; what in its original state was complex or general, is here made a chosen particular; what was monotonous out there, is here mixed and contrasted; what was rank and ragged there, is here taught to be staid and fine; what had a fugitive beauty there, has here its beauty prolonged, and is combined with other items, made ”of imagination all compact.” Man has taken the several things and transformed them; and in the process, they pa.s.sed, as it were, through the crucible of his mind to reappear in daintier guise; in the process, the face of Nature became, so to speak, humanised: man's artistry conveyed an added charm.
Judged thus, a garden is, at one and the same time, the response which Nature makes to man's overtures, and man's answer to the standing challenge of open-air beauty everywhere. Here they work no longer in a spirit of rivalry, but for the attainment of a common end. We cannot dissociate them in the garden. A garden is man's transcript of the woodland world: it is common vegetation enn.o.bled: outdoor scenery neatly writ in man's small hand. It is a sort of twin-picture, conceived of man in the studio of his brain, painted upon Nature's canvas with the aid of her materials--a twin-essay where Nature's
... ”primal mind That flows in streams, that breathes in wind”
supplies the matter, man the style. It is Nature's rustic language made fluent and intelligible--Nature's garrulous prose tersely recast--changed into imaginative shapes, touched to finer issues.
”What is a garden?” For answer come hither: be Fancy's guest a moment.
Turn in from the dusty high-road and noise of practical things--for
”Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love”;
descend the octagonal steps; cross the green court, bright with great urns of flowers, that fronts the house; pa.s.s under the arched doorway in the high enclosing wall, with its gates traceried with rival wreaths of beaten iron and clambering sprays of jasmine and rose, and, from the vantage-ground of the terrace-platform where we stand, behold an art-enchanted world, where the alleys with their giddy cunning, their gentle gloom, their cross-lights and dappled shadows of waving boughs, make paths of fantasy--where the water in the lake quivers to the wind's soft footprints, or sparkles where the swallows dip, or springs in jets out of shapely fountain, or, oozing from bronze dolphin's mouth, slides down among moss-flecked stones into a deep dark pool, and is seen anon threading with still foot the careless-careful curved banks fringed with flowering shrubs and trailing willows and brambles--where the flowers smile out of dainty beds in the sunny ecstasy of ”sweet madness”--where the air is flooded with fragrance, and the mixed music of trembling leaves, falling water, singing birds, and the drowsy hum of innumerable insects' wings.
”What is a garden?” It is man's report of earth at her best. It is earth emanc.i.p.ated from the commonplace. Earth is man's intimate possession--Earth arrayed for beauty's bridal. It is man's love of loveliness carried to excess--man's craving for the ideal grown to a fine lunacy. It is piquant wonderment; culminated beauty, that for all its combination of telling and select items, can still contrive to look natural, debonair, native to its place. A garden is Nature aglow, illuminated with new significance. It is Nature on parade before men's eyes; Flodden Field in every parish, where on summer days she holds court in ”lanes of splendour,” beset with pomp and pageantry more glorious than all the kings'.
”Why is a garden made?” Primarily, it would seem, to gratify man's craving for beauty. Behind fine gardening is fine desire. It is a plain fact that men do not make beautiful things merely for the sake of something to do, but, rather, because their souls compel them. Any beautiful work of art is a feat, an essay, of human soul. Someone has said that ”n.o.ble dreams are great realities”--this in praise of unrealised dreams; but here, in the fine garden, is the n.o.ble dream and the great reality.
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