I.
To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen
With the wild flock that never needs a fold,
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean—
Is a pleasure accorded to few only of the dwellers upon earth; seldom indeed to the few who could best appreciate the privilege. A large portion of the sum total of human existence is spent in cities. Outside of these, the wants of life, best supplied by the co-operation of numbers, gather people together in towns and villages. Travelling is generally such only as may be needful in the exercise of trades and professions, with a view to their ultimate end, the accumulation of wealth; or such as exhausted energies demand to fit them for further toil. The invalid, it is true, seeks to revive his failing powers in far-away balmy climates and delicious scenes—and there is a love for his birthplace in the heart of many a wanderer which leads him back time after time to the old homestead, and invests it with countless charms, although bleak and barren its surroundings may be—but to how few individuals it is given, in the fulness of their health and mental faculties, to rove abroad at will through the beauties and sublimities of creation—to look on her rolling oceans and broad lakes; her foaming cataracts and stupendous mountains; on the luxuriant loveliness of the torrid zone, and the icy wonders of the north!
Yet such things always make part of the expectancies, the bright anticipations of youth—the day-dreams, crushed down at last by hard realities. For to generation after generation the story of life is strangely the same. Its general events unfold themselves in a succession marked for each one with singular uniformity; a uniformity, indeed, so susceptible of calculation that on it are based many of its most extended speculations.
Pecuniary interests generally push their claims first and most boldly, because least to be evaded. Then come the petty edicts of an artificial social existence, which command and receive submission before their presence is even suspected, and though their power be neither recognized nor acknowledged. Gradually the turning kaleidoscope of time shows more sombre colors; the path to be trodden is made visible—the mind bends itself to the narrow way—earthly happiness seeks its realization in a circumscribed sphere—and so, one by one, the winged thoughts lower their circle of flight, and the dreamer ceases to dream.
But the love of nature is implanted too deeply in the heart of man to be ever entirely eradicated; and the sentiment finds for itself an expression coextensive with its existence in the universal love of flowers. They have a charm for the eye and soul welling from a deeper source than those graceful forms and brilliant colors, for they are a portion of the great universe. They are a link, and an important one, and the one most exquisitely fashioned, in the mighty chain which holds beside them not only the everlasting hills, but
"Planets, suns, and adamantine spheres."
Year after year they return to us with a beauty which never palls, to make us wiser, and better, and happier; and as punctually they meet from each true heart a greeting fitly due to their fairy manifestations of the same boundless Power which called forth those mightier, sublimer forms of matter so often placed beyond our reach.
Flowers, when mention is made of them in the Old Testament, are consecrated (so to say) by the most lofty associations; they typify virtue—happiness—the Deity himself. When the inspired writer would fain depict in language level to our humble capacity pleasures of which we can have not the most distant idea—the pleasures of man's first terrestrial paradise—he calls it a garden; as the word best embodying to us happiness sinless and complete; and the Deity in the same sacred volume prompted
"The flower of the field, and the lily of the valley," (Cant. ii.)
as the most appropriate figures of his own divine holiness. Flowers with lamps of fine gold made part of the decorations of Solomon's temple. The Scriptures were originally written in the land of bold imagery and under a burning sun, where herbage and water constitute wealth; consequently, we find throughout its pages rich pastures and flowing streams suggested themselves as emblems of rewards not only in this world, but of those beyond the grave. Again, the brief span of life, and the uncertainty of all earthly possessions, are imaged by the fading flower and the withered grass; and the prophets in their denunciations of the wicked constantly compare them, in the desolation of utter abandonment, to a garden without water.
Asia has always been the especial land of flowers; from the rose-gardens which Semiramis[49] planted at the foot of Mount Bajistanos, 800 B.C., to the fragrant gardens now to be seen in almost every oriental city. The fame of these rose-gardens extended so far that Alexander the Great, on his Eastern expedition, turned a long way from his course to visit them. The city which Solomon founded, Tadmor in the wilderness (Palmyra), about midway between the Orontes and Euphrates, was celebrated, and indeed derived its name, from the abundance of a magnificent species of palm-tree which grew there. This tree (the Borassus of Lin.) yields a liquor seducing and pernicious, and in taste resembling weak champagne.[50] The ruins of this city and its surroundings are described by travellers as exceedingly imposing. The city of Susa (in Scripture, Susan), in a district lying on the Persian Gulf, was in ancient days the residence of the Persian kings; their summers being spent at Ecbatana, in the cool mountainous district of Media. The name Susa signifies a lily, and is said to have been given on account of the great quantity and beauty of these flowers which grew in its vicinity. The fertility of the land of Bashan is mentioned in Scripture, and its oaks are coupled with the cedars of Lebanon. Media also is mentioned by old writers; and Carmania, north of the Persian Gulf, boasted of vines bearing clusters more than two feet long.
China in modern times calls herself the flowery kingdom, but she is not the only one; in many other parts roses are extensively cultivated for the purpose of distilling from them the ottar (attah-gul) of commerce; and the landscape is often converted for a hundred acres into one great rose-garden. It has been estimated that one-half of all the varieties of roses scattered over our gardens were originally brought from Asia; and perhaps, counting the fields planted there for distillation, it may be said that one-half of all in actual bloom adorn that quarter of the globe. Yet the simple wild roses of Asia, like our own wild roses, are very inconspicuous little flowers; it is only under the skilful hand of the florist that each one of those many varieties develops its own peculiar beauties, and we obtain the cultivated roses of the garden. The Afghan province of Turkistan is, in some parts, at the present day famous for its roses. Balkh, the modern capital, is so exceedingly hot that each spring the inhabitants in a body leave it for the little village of Mezar; and Mezar boasts of the most beautiful roses in the world—a fragrant red rose which they name gul-i-surkh. This peculiar variety grows on the pretended tomb of Ali (whose real monument is at Nedjef). They say that these roses will flourish in no soil but that of Mezar—an experiment (they say) which has been repeatedly tried and failed. Mr. Vambéry, who was there in 1864, says, "They are certainly more lovely and fragrant than any I ever saw."
Mr. Vambéry was sent in 1863, by the Hungarian Academy, on a scientific mission to Central Asia. At Teheran he assumed the dress of a dervish and the name of Hadji Rechid, and in this character he joined a company of twenty-four pilgrims, "ragged and dirty," who were on their return from Mecca to their far-away home in the northeast. They never penetrated his disguise—and with them he traversed an extent of country never before visited by a European. They travelled mostly by night, to avoid the excessive heat. Of course much natural landscape was lost, but we are struck with the abundance of flowers and gardens along this route. One which he mentions is not fascinating, but that was an exception; before leaving Teheran, he visited two European friends near there, and found "Count G—— in a small silk tent in a garden like a caldron; the heat was awful! Mr. Alison was more comfortable in his pleasant garden at Guhalek."
When the pilgrims resumed their journey at Teheran, such as were rich enough hired a camel for two, as partners. Mr. Vambéry soon loaned his animal to a "dirty friend," and joined the pedestrians, who, like true believers—followers of the Prophet—buried all care in one word, kismet.[51] As they tramped on (he says), "When their enthusiasm had been sufficiently stimulated by reminiscences of the gardens of Mergolan, Namengan, and Kholand, all began with one accord to sing a telkin (hymn), in which I joined by screaming as loud as I was able Allah ya Allah!"
The gardens at Tabersi, a place where they rested, were very beautiful, also there were "abundance of oranges and lemons, tinted yellow and red with their dark-green leaves." From scenes of luxuriant vegetation they passed into the desert of Turkistan, which extended on all sides, far as eye could reach, like a vast sea of sand, on one side slightly undulating in little hills, like waves in a storm, on the other side level as a calm lake. Not a bird in the air, nor a crawling thing on the earth; "traces of nothing but departed life in the bleaching bones of man or beast who had perished there!" But mark how rapid the transition once more to beauty and fertility! On emerging from this desolation and reaching the frontier of Bokara, they had only proceeded half an hour through a country resplendent with gardens and cultivated fields when the little village of Kakemir lay before them.
Bokara (the city) is at this day the Rome of Islam. There is a small garden not far from it whose fame is widely extended; for in it stands the tomb of Baha-ed-din, the national saint of Turkistan, second in sanctity only to Mahomet. Pilgrimages are made to this tomb and garden from the most remote parts of China; and the people of Bokara go every week. About three hundred asses ply for hire between the garden and the city. It is considered a miraculous devotion in these animals that, while they go thither with the greatest alacrity, only the most determined cudgelling can turn them homeward—but then, asses may have rural proclivities.
Samarcand is the most beautiful city in Turkistan; magnificent in her splendid gardens, and in the tale of past glory told in her ruins. Two of the lofty domes which greet the eye of the stranger as he approaches are associated with Timour—the one is his mosque, the other his tomb, where the warlike Tartar rests among flowers. If we can picture the many lofty edifices with their imposing domes, and then suppose the whole intermixed with closely planted gardens, we shall have a faint idea of the loveliness in the first view of Samarcand. The way from Samarcand to Karshi, south, lies for the last two miles entirely through gardens.[52]
In Karshi is a large garden called Kalenterkhane—literally, beggar's house; but we would rather translate it pilgrim's house. The words are somewhat synonymous there, where the most saintly pilgrims to the tomb of the Prophet subsist on alms. But this is a lovely garden on the bank of the river, with walks and beds of flowers; and here the beau monde of Karshi are to be seen daily from about two o'clock until past sunset. In different parts of the place the Samovins (gigantic Russian tea-kettles) are constantly occupied in furnishing their customers, gathered around them in circles two and three deep, with the national beverage, tea.
We have a slight glimpse of tropical flowers in a greenhouse, but nothing of their native beauty and abundance; for what a poor representative of its class is that dwarfed and solitary specimen, faded in color and deficient in the perfume of a hot climate! Then how can imagination fill out the entire landscape—when vines and trees cluster together, and twist their dark leaves and a thousand such blossoms into one sweet mass? Then the nard grass; and the spicy chandan, which old books say once covered the mountains of Malaya; and the groves of catalpa—not the catalpa of our latitude, but that which opens under an Indian sky, which the bee seeks before all other blossoms! The morning-glory (Ipomea) here has no fragrance, but one which grows wild in Southern Asia gives out a perfume like cloves.
One thing we remark in Asia is the quantity of flowers cultivated in cities, even the largest and most densely populated; in those of China especially, flowers are a household necessity. In most other lands—certainly in ours—they are associated with life in the country, or, at least, they are the pleasant privilege of the little village. Flowers in a city are luxuries only within reach of the wealthy. A bouquet bought in the market-place is a rare excess of floral expenditure, and it must needs be trimmed and watered until the last leaf withers. The dweller in a labyrinth of brick walls is happy if he can, one time in a year, escape to grass and gardens, and refresh memory that such things exist; but in Asiatic cities flowers are a part of life. A modern traveller says:
"After an interesting passage up the river to Canton, the stranger enters the suburbs of the city. Here he is surprised to see the number of flowers and flowering-plants which everywhere meet his eyes ... every house-window and courtyard is filled with them."
The home of Ponqua-qua, a retired Chinese merchant and mandarin, was crowded with flowers and sweet shrubs. Besides a greenhouse of choice plants, and the customary garden, his banqueting-hall opened on a grove of orange-trees and camellias, all covered with singing-birds. In years long past, the same tastes prevailed. Sir John Chardon, who was in Persia in 1686, dwells on delicious city gardens of "roses, lilies, and peach-trees." And further back still, in A.D. 1086, lived Atoz, a celebrated Chinese statesman and writer. In a description of his villa and grounds, he enumerates hedges of roses and pomegranate-trees—banks of odoriferous flowers—bamboo groves with gravel walks, willows and cedars, with the added treasure of a library of 5,000 volumes.[53]
In almost all pagan countries some certain flowers, either real or imaginary, receive a sort of veneration from being associated with supernatural and invisible things. Oftentimes the plant so honored is a tree, as the Soma of the Hindoos (the Persian Homa), which was "the first tree planted by Ahura-marda by the fountain of life. He who drinks of its juice can never die." In the Hindoo Mahabharet, the mountain Mandar, the occasional abode of the deities, is covered with a "twining creeper;" and India boasts a vine well befitting to deck the home of the gods! It is the Bengal banisteria of Linnæus, the most gigantic of all climbers. Its blossoms are pale pink shaded with red and yellow—so beautiful and so fragrant that it has gained the native name "delight of the woods." Another mountain, Meroo—a spot "beyond man's comprehension"—is adorned with trees and celestial plants of rare virtue.
The Pelása (Butea frondosa) is held in great veneration; it gave name to the plain Plássey, or more properly Pelássey. It is named in the Vedas, in the laws of Menu, and in Sanscrit poems. Few plants (says Sir W. Jones) are considered more venerable and holy. There was a famous grove of it once at Crishnanagar.
The oriental Nauclea gives an odor like wine from its gold-colored blossoms, hence it was called Halipriga, or beloved of Halin, the Bacchus of India.
The ash-tree is very conspicuous in the fables of the Edda, and, as some part of the Scandinavian creed is said to have been carried thither from Asia, we may speak of it here. In the fifth fable of the prose Edda, the first man was named Aske (ash-tree), and the first woman Emla (elm-tree). We ask, Why these two especial trees? But see further—they were created by the sons of Bore from two pieces of wood found floating in the waves—and, behold, a sensible reason!
An ash-tree is in the palace of the gods; it typifies the universe. Its ramifications are countless—penetrating all things—and under its branches the gods hold council. But this ash-tree in various shapes is almost the only green leaf in Scandinavian mythology. Whatever else Sigge (Odin) carried thither from Asia, he left behind the countless (and some beautiful) flower legends. Or did they die in the icy north—and in their place spring up that machinery of blood and fierce passions which made Valhalla not the flower-clad mountain of oriental climes, but a battle-ground, where life was renewed only to be again pleasurably extinguished, and where boar's meat and mead was joy sufficient?
Flowers seem literally to pervade almost all oriental literature, ancient and modern. They inspire kings to lay aside care and enact the poet. In the middle of the last century, one of the Chinese emperors, Kienlong, distinguished himself by a long poem, in which he painted the beauties of nature and his admiration of them. He was contemporary with Frederick the Great, who also, as his French friend sneeringly informs us, always travelled with a quire of foolscap in his pocket. On which of the monarchs the muses smiled most kindly, no Chinese critic is here to tell. See-ma-kung, a Chinese statesman, wrote a book called the Garden—and very many similar might be named.[54]
What can express the softer emotions of the soul as well as flowers? The oriental lover can find no sweeter name for the object of his passion than "My rosebud!" Her form is the young palm-tree, her brow the white jasmine, her curling locks sweet hyacinths; her grace is the cypress; she is a fawn among aromatic shrubs!
"Roses and lilies are like the bright cheeks of beautiful maidens,
In whose ears the pearls hang like drops of dew!"
Listen to a song from the Schar-Namah of Fedusi, one of the most celebrated Persian poets. In the original, the lines rhyme in couplets; this is only an extract. One can scarce think of the maiden as walking the earth. Surely she must have reclined on some rose, or floated round some lily!
"The air is perfumed with musk, and the waters of the brooks, are they not the essence of roses? This jasmine bending under the weight of its flowers, this thicket of roses shedding its perfume, seem like the divinities of the garden. Wherever Menisched, the daughter of Afrariab, appears, we find men happy. It is she who makes the garden as brilliant as the sun; the daughter of an august monarch, is she not a new star? She is the brilliant star that rises over the rose and jasmine. Peerless beauty! her features are veiled, but the elegance of her figure rivals the cypress. Her breath spreads the perfume of amber around her; upon her cheek reposes the rose. How languishing are her eyes! Her lips have stolen their color from the wine, but their odor is like the essence of roses."—Translated from Sismonde de Sismondi.
Nor is it only love which levies this tribute on flowers. We subjoin an extract from Mesihi, another poet whose fame is world-wide: Mesihi the irresistible!—who paints in many a lyric, with graphic touch, the fascinations of beauty, and in the concluding verse of one of them (with happy self-complacency) thus soliloquizes:
"Thou art a nightingale with a sweet voice,
O Mesihi! when thou walkest with the damsels
Whose cheeks are like roses!"
In the following subject, flowers would be expected, but in the long poem of which this is only a part they are truly—the whole:
ODE TO SPRING.
Thou hearest the song of the nightingale, that the vernal season approaches. The spring has spread a bower of joy in every grove; where the almond-tree sheds its silver blossoms.
Be cheerful; be full of mirth;
For the spring soon passes away, it will not last.The groves and hills are again adorned with all sorts of flowers. A pavilion of roses as a seat of pleasure is raised in the garden; who knows which of us will live when the fair season ends?
Be cheerful; etc., etc.
Again the dew glitters on the leaves of the lily like the water of a bright scymitar. The dew-drops fall through the air on the garden of roses; listen to me if thou wouldst be delighted.
Be cheerful; etc., etc.
The time is past when the plants were sick, and the rosebud hung its head on its bosom. The season comes in which mountains and steeps are covered with tulips.
Be cheerful; etc., etc.
Each morning the clouds shed gems over the rose gardens. The breath of the gale is Tartarian musk. Be not neglectful of duty through too great love of the world.
Be cheerful; etc., etc.
Mesihi, trans. by Sir W. Jones.
Flowers are beautiful—but such a profusion of them in print is not congenial to our northern tastes, despite other testimony in the enthusiasm of some oriental scholars. Of course, for those who are so happy as to read the originals there is a charm which is lost in translation—but there is good reason why we fail to sympathize. Hemmed in by cold and snow half the year, thought, passion, and deep feelings seek expression through channels not made of things visible; and their tides are not the less deep and strong because less demonstrative. The passionate and imaginative literature of the East is the outpourings of the soul under circumstances widely different from those under which similar effusions here (and some of the most impassioned and eloquent, too) have been penned. Each calls forth different tropes and figures—and if it is difficult for the one side to stir up imagination to untiring flights through rose-gardens, equally would the poet of Negaristan find it impossible to picture the charms of his mistress, and die of love or despair, before a coal-fire in the lamp-light.
Who can hear of roses without calling up an image of the nightingale, or, in Eastern phrase, the Bulbul? The mutual loves of the two (for roses can love there) have made the theme of tales and songs without number. Whether the story is fact or fiction—whether the bird really pours forth its most thrilling notes in the atmosphere of that perfume, may be a disputed point with "outside barbarians," but with native writers the belief is fully accepted. Here, again, the repetition is wearisome; and here, again, it is pleasant to blame—not our lack of imagination, but our peculiar surroundings; for, alas! our vault empyrean is colorless or cloudy; the melodious Bulbul a thing to dream of; and the song, generally, only a prosaic translation!
The southwestern part of Asia is the land of spices, frankincense, and myrrh. It is also the land of sweet flowers, although few modern travellers say much about them. One reason, perhaps, is that the extreme heat obliges the stranger to rest most of the day, and night is for stars, not flowers.
But who ever associates flowers with Arabia? Is it the prolonged and baleful influence of that little wood-cut map which monopolized a whole page in infantile geography—the map which presents Arabia arrayed in dots, which we were then and there informed meant desert? Or is it the omnipresent muffled figures, camels, and tents which typify Arabia in all books devoted to juveniles? Whatever the cause, Arabia and Arabians always come to mind sandy and wandering.
Not so the Arabia which Niebuhr traversed in the last part of the last century, with most ample opportunities for information.
Arabia, he writes, enjoys almost constant verdure. It is true, most of the trees shed their leaves, and annual plants wither and are reproduced; but the interval between the fall of old leaves and the reappearance of others is so short that it is scarcely observable.[55]
Here are found most of the plants of two zones. On the high lands, those of Europe and Northern or rather Middle Asia; on the plains, those of India and Africa, not precisely identical with those of Europe, but a different species or variety. Delicious and abundant also are all kinds of tropical fruits; and so plentiful the melons that they serve as food for their camels. From Arabia were also first brought many of those plants which we cultivate as curiosities rather than for beauty—the cactus tribe. One of the most remarkable has its stem expanded to a globular form, about the size of a man's head; this rests on the earth, and from it proceed branches bearing flowers. In seeking for the most showy flowers, we must turn to their forest trees. Their forests are not very extensive, and such as they have are rarely seen by strangers, being quite distant from the usual course of travel. But the majestic height of the trees, covered with bright-colored and fragrant blossoms, are in marked contrast to our own forest trees, whose flowers, generally, can scarcely be distinguished from the leaves. One kind, the keura, is so very fragrant that a small blossom will perfume an entire apartment. Among small sweet plants is the panicratum, something like the sea-daffodil, of the purest white; an hibiscus, of the most brilliant red; and the moscharia, which gives from leaves and flowers the perfume of musk. But a catalogue of their names alone would exceed our limits.
"With these glorious blossoms," says Mr. Niebuhr, "the peasantry retain the ancient custom of crowning themselves on certain days of joy and festivity."
There is poetry in this custom. "It is said that this nation alone has produced more poets than all others united" (Sismondi). Arabia shares more than flowers with the rest of Asia; she, too, joins to them poetry. Her people have the same fertile imagination, aversion to the restraints of cities, love of freedom and of nature, quick feelings and ardent passions, which make the true poet. The day is past—even so long past that they have forgotten it—when all this found expression in compositions, which we read now, and marvel at their rich inventions and glowing imagery; but, nevertheless, they are poets still! A distinguished French author writes:
"Through the whole extent of the Mohammedan dominions, in Turkey, Persia, and even to the extremity of India, a numerous class of Arabs, both men and women, find a livelihood in reciting these tales to crowds who delight to forget their annoyances in the pleasing dreams of imagination. In the coffee-houses of the Levant, one of these men will gather a silent crowd around him, whom he will excite, by his tale, to terror or pity; but more frequently he will picture to his audience those brilliant and fantastic visions which are the patrimony of Eastern imaginations. The public squares of cities abound with these story-tellers, who fill up, too, the dull hours of the seraglio. Physicians recommend them often to their patients, to soothe pain or induce sleep; and those accustomed to the sick modulate their voices and soften their tones as slumber steals over the sufferer."
Seven of the most remarkable old Arabian poems, written in gold, are hung in the Caaba, or Temple, at Mecca; and the authors show themselves not in the least degree behind other orientals in heaping up flowers and metaphors.
Flowers were once held, in Arabia, of high importance in science. Next to the sciences of mathematics, they valued that of medicine; and many volumes were written on their medical plants. Somewhere about the year 941, Aben-al-Beïther made a botanical tour over Europe and Asia, and a part of Africa, and, on his return, published a volume On the Virtues of Plants. Still earlier than this, in 775, Al-Mansour, the second prince of the Abassides, invited a Greek physician to his court, and obtained through him translations of many learned Greek works on medicinal plants. Such are flowers in Asia.
It is no wonder that, where nature has lavished her choicest productions, and all classes delight in cultivating them, flowers have increased ad infinitum. No wonder their brilliant hues inspired a native poet to sing:
"A rainbow has descended on the garden."
Mesihi.