Persian Lilacs and Peonies in Garden of the Kimball Homestead, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
In the West Indies the Lilac is a flower of mysterious power; its perfume keeps away evil spirits, ghosts, banshees. If it grows not in the dooryard, its protecting branches are hung over the doorway. I think of this when I see it shading the door of happy homes in New England.
In our old front yards we had only the common Lilacs, and occasionally a white one; and as a rarity the graceful, but sometimes rather spindling, Persian Lilacs, known since 1650 in gardens, and shown on [page 151]. How the old gardens would have stared at the new double Lilacs, which have luxuriant plumes of bloom twenty inches long.
The "pensile Lilac" has been sung by many poets; but the spirit of the flower has been best portrayed in verse by Elizabeth Akers. I can quote but a single stanza from so many beautiful ones.
"How fair it stood, with purple tassels hung,
Their hue more tender than the tint of Tyre;
How musical amid their fragrance rung
The bee's bassoon, keynote of spring's glad choir!
O languorous Lilac! still in time's despite
I see thy plumy branches all alight
With new-born butterflies which loved to stay
And bask and banquet in the temperate ray
Of springtime, ere the torrid heats should be:
For these dear memories, though the world grow gray,
I sing thy sweetness, lovely Lilac tree!"
Another poet of the Lilac is Walt Whitman. He tells his delight in "the Lilac tall and its blossoms of mastering odor." He sings: "with the birds a warble of joy for Lilac-time." That noble, heroic dirge, the Burial Hymn of Lincoln, begins:—
"When Lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd."
The poet stood under the blossoming Lilacs when he learned of the death of Lincoln, and the scent and sight of the flowers ever bore the sad association. In this poem is a vivid description of—
"The Lilac bush, tall growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom, rising delicate with the perfume strong I love.
With every leaf a miracle."