The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table says: "Did you ever hear a poet who did not talk flowers? Don't you think a poem which for the sake of being original should leave them out, would be like those verses where the letter a or e, or some other, is omitted? No; they will bloom over and over again in poems as in the summer fields, to the end of time, always old and always new." The Autocrat himself knew well a poet who never talked flowers in his poems, a poet beloved of all other poets,—Arthur Hugh Clough,—though he loved and knew all flowers. From Matthew Arnold's beautiful tribute to him, are a few of his wonderful flower lines, cut out from their fellows:—
"Through the thick Corn the scarlet Poppies peep,
And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see
Pale blue Convolvulus in tendrils creep,
And air-swept Lindens yield
Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers
Of bloom...,
* * * * *
"Soon will the high midsummer pomps come on,
Soon will the Musk Carnations break and swell.
Soon shall we have gold-dusted Snapdragon,
Sweet-william with his homely cottage smell,
And Stocks in fragrant blow."
Oh, what a master hand! Where in all English verse are fairer flower hues? And where is a more beautiful description of a midsummer evening, than Arnold's exquisite lines beginning:—
"The evening comes; the fields are still;
The tinkle of the thirsty rill."
Dr. Holmes was also a master in the description of garden flowers. I should know, had I never been told save from his verses, just the kind of a Cambridge garden he was reared in, and what flowers grew in it. Lowell, too, gives ample evidence of a New England childhood in a garden.
The gardens of Shenstone's Schoolmistress and of Thomson's poems come to our minds without great warmth of welcome from us; while Clare's lines are full of charm:—
"And where the Marjoram once, and Sage and Rue,
And Balm, and Mint, with curl'd leaf Parsley grew,
And double Marigolds, and silver Thyme,
And Pumpkins 'neath the window climb.
And where I often, when a child, for hours
Tried through the pales to get the tempting flowers,
As Lady's Laces, everlasting Peas,
True-love-lies-bleeding, with the Hearts-at-ease
And Goldenrods, and Tansy running high,
That o'er the pale tops smiled on passers by."